Social status and art collecting: the collections of Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen

In general, I find Clunas's arguments to be persuasive; his analysis, however, tends to validate the biases of certain Ming authors whom he quotes regarding the cultural abilities of the mercantile elite at this time, because he does little to counter negative portrayals. A related difficulty concerns a key point that he makes about texts written by such distinguished literati as Wen Zhenheng (1585-1645). In discussing the problematic nature of "authorship" for Ming books on correct cultural practices, Clunas notes the dependence of Wen Zhenheng's book on one by Tu Long (1542-1605), or at least one associated with his name, which, in turn, was dependent on a book by Gao Lian (active ca. 1581-91), the son of a rich Hangzhou merchant who probably continued his father's profession.(23) Clunas never compares Wen Zhenheng's work in sufficient detail with that of Gao Lian, so when he describes ideas in the former as representing "the product of elite consensus about the way 'things ought to be,'"(24) one is left wondering about the extent to which the merchant Gao played a role in formulating that consensus.

We need to piece together more information about contributions made by merchants, despite the tendency of much of the literature on which we rely to ridicule them or downplay their achievements. Some recent studies of patronage by merchants from what is now the province of Anhui provide evidence to counter such negative portrayals. By the late sixteenth century, there were wealthy merchants who not only amassed impressive collections of antiques and contemporary works, but also demonstrated their mastery of the elite practices of connoisseurship and colophon writing.(25)

One reason I have adopted a rather cautious approach in interpreting the social significance of Wang Zhen's abilities as a collector is that I am very conscious of the degree to which contemporary views of Ming and Qing merchants are shaped by those members of the literati who responded negatively to the rise of a group whose members became more numerous and powerful after the period under study here. Also, I do not presume to be able to reconstruct his actual motivations and instead offer possible interpretations.

One way to try to circumvent undue acceptance of a body of literature dominated by the nonmercantile elite is to read such texts for unintended information. For example, the story about Wang Fu and his neighbor, first recorded by a scholar-official in the fifteenth century, prior to the period analyzed by Clunas, can be seen as indicating that merchants were already mastering some, if not all, of the codes of cultured taste and behavior. It is significant that the merchant did not consider Wang's bamboo painting (for an example, [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 5 OMITTED]) to have been too amateurish. On the contrary, he hoped for a mate to create a pair of scrolls. While this offended Wang's sense of the social decorum governing the giving and receiving of paintings, it is also suggestive of the appropriation by merchants of certain literati values. Whether or not the story is apocryphal, the original narrator unintentionally acknowledged that in the fifteenth century merchants did not necessarily prefer to own paintings by professionals or works that had a skillful polish. Perhaps some merchants sincerely appreciated works by amateurs such as Wang Fu, while others merely realized the high respect literati accorded to paintings by members of their own status group and feigned admiration for such works in order to be accepted as cultured men. It is worth noting that textual evidence suggests that fifteenth-century gentry frequently praised works by professionals, who by this time were often as adept at painting in abbreviated, sketchy modes as they were in highly finished, detailed ones.(26)