Featured White Papers
Content provided in partnership with
Social status and art collecting: the collections of Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen
Art Bulletin, The, March, 1996 by Kathlyn Maurean Liscomb
Shen Zhou's collection-scroll had no works by Chen Lu or Xia Zhi; it did, however, include a painting by Dai Jin, Xia Zhi's teacher. Traditional histories of Chinese painting generally do not lead one to expect Shen Zhou to have been interested in Dai Jin's paintings. After all, they came to be seen as the founders of two distinct schools, the Wu and Zhe pai, as leaders of new trends in amateur and professional painting. However, many fifteenth-century critics considered Dai Jin to have been the most talented and versatile painter in the generation prior to that of Shen Zhou. Dai was highly regarded by at least three of Shen Zhou's older friends: Xia Chang, Liu Pu (d. before 1453), and Du Qiong. In the colophon for Shen Zhou's collection-scroll Du wrote, "In painting Dai Jin thoroughly mastered the utmost marvels of all the schools."(94)
Wang Zhen's collection had no signed works by Dai Jin; however, an anonymous depiction of a parting scene included in the smaller scroll set has many of the brush mannerisms of works in the tradition of Guo Xi (after 1000-ca. 1090) by fifteenth-century painters usually associated with the so-called Zhe School [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7, 8 OMITTED]. Indeed, Mary Ann Rogers suggests that it may well have been painted by Dai Jin himself,(95) although one could argue that it has more in common with similar interpretations of this artistic mode by the court painter Li Zai (active ca. 1426-ca. 1468) and Ma Shi (active ca. 1420s-1450s), who were also quite famous during their lifetimes.(96)
The general stylistic traits of this anonymous handscroll can be seen in a large hanging scroll by Ma Shi entitled Living in a Mountain Valley Village in Spring [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 9 OMITTED]. Now barely remembered because his extant works are so rare, Ma Shi was represented in the collections of both Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 10 OMITTED!.(97) Ma was known for his interpretations of the tradition founded by Guo Xi, a member of the Northern Song (960-1127) imperial painting academy, and was compared by Qing dynasty critic-historians with various Ming-dynasty professional painters, including Dai Jin, Li Zai, and Xie Huan (active ca. late 1300s-after 1452).(98) Living in a Mountain Valley Village in Spring has a lot in common with works by Dai Jin and Li Zai and probably also with paintings by Xie Huan that are no longer extant or properly attributed. In reproductions, Ma's hanging scroll is impressive primarily for his skill in capturing much of the imposing monumentality of Northern Song dynasty landscape paintings; in the original, however, the dynamic rhythms of his brushwork are much more noticeable. These brush mannerisms are what link the scroll with the so-called Zhe-School style. Ma Shi served as a government astronomer in Guangdong and in the capital, and was probably promoted from student status to the position of Erudite of the Waterclock in 1450.(99) Because of the special restrictions placed on court astronomers, it is unlikely that he ever served as a court painter, as was indicated by He Liangjun (1506-1573),(100) although he may have accepted painting commissions to supplement his income as an astronomer-technocrat.
