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Social status and art collecting: the collections of Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen
Art Bulletin, The, March, 1996 by Kathlyn Maurean Liscomb
Although available sources do not specify the type of trade and commerce in which Wang Zhen, his father, and uncle engaged, Huaian's civilian and military importance to the central government, its role as a ship-building and salt-trading center, and its location on a major trade route surely fostered a situation conducive to various business opportunities. Wang Zhen's biographer does note that Wang's ancestors resided in Yizhen, Yangzhou, until the beginning of the Hongwu era (1368-99), when his great-grandfather was recorded as a resident of Huaian.(42) Possibly, since Yangzhou was like Huaian a major center for the production and sale of salt, the family may have been involved in this business. Huaian's location enabled local residents to keep abreast of political, economic, and cultural developments all along the Grand Canal. Yet although the local elite had ample opportunities to form connections with their counterparts from such cultural centers as Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, this does not seem to have transformed Huaian into a cultural center influential at the national level or even within Jiangsu. In this regard, all other things being equal, a collector from Suzhou had the advantage over one from Huaian.
It is necessary now to provide a more detailed analysis of the respective social statuses of Wang Zhen and Shen Zhou, for the situation is considerably more complex than the simple contrast between landowning literatus and merchant with which I began. In analyzing the surviving biographies of these men, I take the texts to be representations of their respective subjects. By the word representation, I mean to suggest that idealized personas were constructed for individuals based on a foundation of conventions both for socially sanctioned behavior and for the literary genres of different types of biographies. It is impossible for us to determine the authenticity of projected images based on this kind of information, although such representations may provide clues to social values. For Wang Zhen, our only source is his memorial tablet biography (muzhi ming). The wealth of biographical accounts of Shen Zhou reflects his much greater fame. In an attempt to confine my reading of social values from such accounts to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the present summary is generally limited to Shen's memorial tablet biography and record of conduct (xing-zhuang).
Shen Zhou's paternal great-grandfather, Shen Liangchen, is said to have founded the family fortune by developing previously uncultivated agricultural land. He is also described as a connoisseur who counted among his friends such famous painters as Wang Meng (ca. 1308-1385).(43) An early account indicates that the Shen family became established as a scholarly one in the next generation.(44) Although, according to Wang Ao (1450-1524), neither Shen Zhou's grandfather Shen Cheng (1376-1458) nor his father, Shen Heng (1409-1477), served as officials, Du Qiong indicates that Shen Cheng was selected to be an expectant official in the Office of Transmission during the Yongle period (1403-25). Elsewhere in the same essay, Du writes that Shen Cheng was summoned to the capital as a bright talent (xiancai) to serve on a probationary basis and then received orders to go to Jiangsu and Zhejiang. He gained notice for his incorruptible conduct, according to Du Qiong, and was about to be given an official post when he asked to retire owing to ill health.(45)
