Encounters on Land and Sea;
Western Influences in the Wake of the Opium War
Developments in Art in the Late-Ming and Subsequent Years - China Trade Paintings and the Influence of Western Painters - Dianshi Studio Illustrated - Tushanwan and Its Influence - Traditional Thought and the Accommodation of Calligraphy and Painting - Early Chinese Students Overseas - Painting Societies and the Market - The Shanghai School and Painters
Developments in ART IN the Late-Ming and Subsequent Years
In the early 16th century, geographic discoveries initiated the history of globalization, and in 1514 Portuguese voyagers reached southern China. As trade routes continually expanded and reports of a mysterious country trickled back home, missionaries were never far behind. The most prestigious order of European missionaries to travel to China was the Society of Jesus, and Chinese in contact with them noted at an early date the Jesuits’ use of iconic art. For example, in the 7th year (1579) of the Wanli Emperor’s reign, the Italian Jesuit missionary Michael Ruggieri (1543-1607) brought ‘finely executed color paintings of holy subjects’ as gifts to China. Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was the Jesuit missionary who won greatest renown in China. After arriving in Macau in 1582, Ricci went on to win recognition from the emperor for his polymathic talents and was granted permission to set up the first mission house in Beijing. The art objects Ricci presented to the Wanli Emperor (r.1572-1620) included images of Christ and of Mary and Jesus.[1] The contemporary scholar Gu Qiyuan (1565-1628) described, in Kezuo Zhuiyu, how some of the religious illustrations Ricci presented were executed ‘with lifelike effect by applying several colors to a brass plate’.
A Jesuit named Giovanni Niccolò (1563-1629) who had accompanied Matteo Ricci to Macau in 1583, painted The Savior—perhaps the first western painting to be created in China—attempting to render a distinctly non-Chinese statue showing Jesus holding an orb in one hand and a cross in the other. Niccolò, described by Ricci as ‘the first master to teach European painting techniques to the Japanese and Chinese’,[2] was sent in 1601 to Nagasaki where he founded a fine arts school at which he taught oil painting and etching. You Wenhui (1575-1633), a pupil whom Niccolò took to Japan in 1590, produced many religious paintings on returning to China. Although Ricci disparaged his talents, You Wenhui’s Portrait of Matteo Ricci (1610) still hangs in a Jesuit church in Rome and is thought to be the earliest extant work by a Chinese oil painter. Another artist who emerged from this school in Japan was Jacques Niva (1579-1638). After reaching China in 1601, this painter of mixed Chinese and Japanese parentage traveled frequently to Macau, Nanjing, and Beijing, and from 1601 to 1610, as Niccolò’s student, Niva painted many works in oil treating religious subjects for various Catholic churches when in Beijing, Macau, and Nanchang. Those recorded in documents include Saint Luke and the Holy Mother Holding the Infant Jesus (December1603) painted in Beijing; the altar painting The Assumption of Mary painted in 1606 for the restoration of the Church of Saint Paul, which had been lost in a fire. In his day Jacques Niva was considered an outstanding painter and the painting of Archangel Michael still housed in Macau’s St. Joseph’s Seminary is probably his work. Although the technique is Western, one can easily associate the use of line, proportions, and ornaments with Japanese and Oriental painting.
The painter Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) was a visible figure at court during the reigns of three emperors—Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong. He had arrived in Beijing in the winter of 1715 and, like other missionary painters, was employed in the imperial court and honored by the Kangxi Emperor. However, like the other western artists in the imperial workshops and studios located within the Forbidden City, he was obliged to paint according to the emperor’s demands. The result was a unique ‘Sino-European style’ characterized by physical accuracy and structural soundness, but minimizing chiaroscuro in order to produce a planar, decorative style reflecting Chinese taste.
China Trade Paintings AND THE INFLUENCE OF WESTERN PAINTERS
In 1685, the Qing government re-opened China to maritime trade, and established four customs authorities (Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangnan). It was not long before Westerners began engaging in trading activities in a leased area on the banks of the Pearl River to the west of Guangzhou that came to be known in English as the ‘Thirteen Factories’.[3] According to accounts, Giuseppe Castiglione lived there for a time. From around 1720 onwards, what are today called ‘China trade paintings’ (waixiao-hua) began to make their appearance, and these gradually came to include oil paintings, paintings on glass, watercolors, and crayon works, that took as their subject ceremonies, events, maritime scenes, buildings, people, production, flowers, birds, animals, customs, and urban life. The appearance of these paintings is easily explained by the fact that these were painted illustrations that foreigners who came to China for trade or travel could take home with them to show their friends and family something of the scenes and customs of China and satisfy their curiosity. This led to the establishment of workshops that could paint pictures in wholesale batches. The pictures favored by Westerners were works painted on paper, or sometimes with colors applied to wood or glass. Because these workshops produced paintings to be sold in Europe and America, art historians have termed such works ‘China trade paintings’. At first the subject of these illustrations focused on illustrations of the local production of such exported commodities as silk, tea, and ceramics, or on local flora, but the genre’s range of subjects later expanded greatly.
The subject matter of trade paintings gave abundant expression to life in Guangzhou, with vendors, performers, monks, stonemasons, scribes, Western buildings, distilleries, knife-sharpeners, tailors, cotton fluffers, millers, glassmakers, food stalls, one-man shows, book stalls, singers, fortune tellers, and street-side militia members providing a panorama of city life under the Qing empire, and providing a rich visual source for understanding the social life of the time.
Early ‘China trade paintings’ were close to Chinese paintings in their style of expression. From the 19th century onwards they reveal a tendency towards expressive realism, and at the height of such thriving trade, there were dozens of shops employing thousands of artisan painters to produce China trade paintings. Yet scholars are not clear about how painters from Europe influenced Chinese painters and through them the artisans in the workshops. Obviously, the numerous art reproductions that westerners brought with them must have provided the models from which a great many anonymous painters learned. [4] Direct imitations of western art executed by Chinese artisans were also shipped off for sale in Europe and America. So frequent were the exchanges that soon after the departure of a traveling European painter, his style and techniques would give rise to a large number of reproductions done in the workshops. Visitors included the painters August Borget (1807-1877) of France and Marciano Antonio Baptista (1826-1896) of Portugal. The former arrived in Guangzhou around September 1838 and only remained for ten months in China, but his painted works had a prolonged influence on trade painters. The latter was a student George Chinnery (1774-1852) approved of highly. Baptista eventually became a painting teacher in his own right and left numerous highly praised works. There were quite a number of Western painters who had similar influence [5], but Chinnery was more important than the rest.
George Chinnery was highly trained. In 1792 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in London, where he was educated by the widely honored head of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). His portrait of the wife of the Portuguese viceroy in Macau, painted in 1840, has a style reminiscent of Reynolds. In May 1802, this painter journeyed to India, where he made a living by painting portraits. By 1825, Chinnery had reached Macau, where he would live until his death. Before Chinnery came to China, the mainstream taste among Guangzhou’s foreign community and the ‘China trade painters’ serving it was described as the Italian or Dutch style, but after the arrival of this English painter, the English style became more popular. He made his living by painting portraits and received commissions to paint portraits and landscapes; at the same time he completed many paintings reflecting the daily lives of Chinese people. In Macau Chinnery also completed more than one thousand sketches and folios using pencil, steel-tip pen, or sepia to depict the streets, dwellings, churches, forts, beaches, markets, and a variety of the denizens of that colony, ranging from fishermen, soldiers, and merchants to priests and temple-goers.
In The Canton Register of December 8, 1835, we can read the following in an article titled ‘Chinese Painters’: ‘Today our attention has been drawn to a Chinese painter whose works are far above those of mediocre artisan painters. This is Lamgua, outstanding apprentice of the painter George Chinnery’.
There was more than one painter known by the name Lamgua (‘Lin Gua’). The Lamgua whom for now we can confirm to be Lin Gua was commonly known as Guan Qiaochang. A large number of works bear his name, which he signed in English as Lamgua. Guan Qiaochang (1801-1854) was born at a time when the Chinese painter Shi Beilin (Spoilum) was at the height of his fame, and Shi was the model Guan looked up to before 1825 when Chinnery arrived in Macau. Shi Beilin’s portrait of the English ship captain Thomas Fry on glass was completed in 1774 in Guangzhou. Other works by him have been discovered, marked with the years 1805 and 1806. Thus we have reason to believe that he was active from the 1770s to the early 1800s, and that he was the first trade painter to be famous for his oil portraits in Guangzhou. People have also noticed the name Guan Zuolin and some surmise that Guan Zuolin and Shi Beilin were identical, or that the former was the latter’s son. The important thing is that this Guan Zuolin, who also went by the name of Lamgua, was an influential oil painter. The Nanhai County Gazetteer recorded: ‘Guan Zuolin, with the soubriquet Cangsong, was a native of Zhujing village in Jiangpusi. Being poor in his youth, he wished for an occupation to support himself, but he did not want to learn an art that would subject him to others. He attached himself to a cargo ship and travelled to America and countries of Europe. He liked the verisimilitude of their oil painting, so he sought ways to learn and master it. He returned to China and set up shop in the Guangzhou city. His lifelike portraits were highly admired by viewers. In the middle years of the Jiaqing reign this skill was just beginning to enter China. Westerners were amazed at this work that was far beyond their expectations’.
Basically this ‘Lamgua’ named Guan Zuolin was active in the middle years of the Jiaqing reign (1796-1820), and no later than 1825, but the Lamgua who was Chinnery’s student (Guan Qiaochang) was an important painter active in the mid-1800s. Guan Qiaochang’s studio was much like that of a present-day artist. On the wall hung an English portrait painting which he used as a model of technique, and on all sides he had placed art reproductions brought to him by Western and Chinese clients. In fact, Guan Qiaochang’s importance lies in his remarkable mastery of Western technique and taste. When his works were exhibited in America, they were thought to be ‘comparable with the most academic American or English painters of the time’.
The open-door policy in the second half of the 19th century caused Shanghai’s economy to come alive. After 1852 Shanghai’s annual trade figures were already ahead of Guangzhou’s. Shanghai held greater appeal for artists who wanted to sell a lot of paintings. For instance, the Guangzhou painter Zhou Gua (Chow Gua) went to Shanghai and opened a painting shop to make living. Documents record that Zhou Gua ‘was skilled at painting portraits, houses, miniatures, and marketplaces. On most of his works were labels bearing his name, written in calligrapher’s ink. One landscape of Shanghai is signed with his name, and the style is similar to that of Samgua. Zhou Gua’s paintings are remarkable for fine depiction of detail’.[6] In his Waterfront Scene, we can see the painter’s absorption in the scenery of this colonial city.
DIANSHI STUDIO ILLUSTRATED
The opening of Shanghai led to the rapid introduction of Western culture to that city. Shanghai’s Dianshi Studio Illustrated, an illustrated journal of current events, chronicled that development over fourteen years from 1884 onwards. Its founder Frances Major seemed to have been convinced that unless his pictorial reported horrific and sensational news events it would not attract readers, and so he encouraged the artist Wu Youru (died 1893) to do his utmost to depict current events, including some from abroad. The illustration from Dianshi Studio Illustrated accompanying an item titled ‘English Prince Viewing Lanterns on the Bund in Shanghai’ is remarkably similar to a photograph taken in 1887 of festivities and bunting along Shanghai’s Bund. True-to-life reportorial pictures were very popular, and people were more receptive than ever to news images reflecting everyday life. The celebrated Wu Youru came from Wu county, Suzhou. He must surely have seen many traditional woodblock illustrations, and would have been familiar with the line-drawing techniques used in their execution. Wu Youru adapted readily to perspective and other newer techniques, although he often retained the traditional use of parallel lines in depicting buildings. In keeping with the periodical’s grab bag of content, the subjects of Wu Youru’s illustrations ranged from current events, urban life, and folklore, to foreign exotica. People tended to view them for their informative or narrative interest. His pictures along with their captions resembled explanatory popular reading matter: there were no graceful, captivating trees or flowers, nor did his brush work have traditional ‘resonant force’.[7] Literati inhabiting the old courtyards and the remnant members of waning clans did not take such illustrations seriously as art, but they relied on pictorials and other media to understand the outside world. In fact, it was the new-style media like Dianshi Studio Illustrated that introduced new knowledge and informed people of the events in Shanghai and beyond that were daily changing people’s understanding of the world.
TUSHANWAN AND ITS INFLUENCE
In 1847 the Spanish monk Joannes Ferrer (1817-1856) was dispatched to Shanghai. Ferrer had received excellent training in art from an early age. Later he was sent to Rome by his father to continue his studies, but he followed the inner promptings of his heart and became a monk. His main job in Shanghai was to preside over design of the church at Dongjiadu. At the same time, he was to paint holy images and engage in sculpture projects. The church was to be decorated with religious art. Because of work requirements, he set up a workshop to train assistants and guide the work of artisans. With the support of Father Admianus Languillas (1808-1878), he added an art classroom where he trained apprentices in art and sculpture on the foundation of the workshop at the southeast corner of St. Ignatius Church in Xujiahui. In 1852 Ferrer accepted Lu Bodu, a student recommended by Father Languillas, but the number of students he accepted was quite small. When he died in 1856, Father Nicolas Massa (1815-1876), who had entered Ferrer’s Xujiahui workshop back in 1851 as an instructor, took over leadership of the workshop at St. Ignatius Church. The Chinese monk Lu Bodu continued his training under Massa, who transmitted additional specific knowledge of painting technique and pigment manufacture. At the end of 1864, the orphanage run by the Catholic Church at Dongjiadu was moved to Tushanwan along the shore of Zhaojiabang, in south Xujiahui. It was probably around this time that the monk Lu Bodu became the first Chinese head of this painting and sculpture workshop, (a position he held until 1869.Three years later, the orphanage was expanded, a chapel was added, and the number of orphans reached 342.
Documents record that although the fine arts school founded in 1852 by Ferrer was incorporated into the orphanage in 1864, the school’s site was kept at the rectory in Xujiahui. A single fine arts school expanded into a fine arts factory with multiple capabilities. In 1867 Lu Bodu and his student Liu Dezhai moved the fine arts factory to Tushanwan. Due to Lu Bodu’s chronic illness, from 1869 Liu Dezhai presided over the painting and sculpture workshops in his stead.
Liu Dezhai (1843-1912), whose secular name was Liu Bizhen, was a friend of Ren Bonian.[8] He was a native of Changshu county (now Changshu city) in the Suzhou area. He probably became Massa and Lu Bodu’s student after Ferrer’s death. After Lu Bodu’s death, he served as head of the Tushanwan atelier for over twenty years. Documents record that Liu Dezhai’s variant holy image ‘Chinese Madonna and Child’ was a revised instance of the subject, done according to his understanding as a Chinese painter. However, we can only make a simple judgment based on an indistinct photograph. We can make out that the characteristics of the Madonna-image are unmistakably Chinese, and even that she is wearing Qing-era garments.
As an important part of the Tushanwan fine arts factory, the atelier gave instruction in watercolor, pencil, fountain pen, Chinese brush technique, charcoal, and oil painting. Subject matter almost always touched upon religion. The workshop also copied European oil paintings and produced stained glass works for sale. Quite a few Chinese orphans learned techniques of Western painting and sculpture here, which had an effect on future dissemination of Western art materials and methods. Although the scope and artistic purpose set limits to the young students’ further consideration of what ideas that might lie behind these methods, nevertheless, grasp of perspective, chiaroscuro, and related knowledge would naturally elicit new ways of examining the actual world in the minds of sensitive students. Moreover, they were likely to use those ways in their observation of things. Tushanwan paintings went through the workshop’s period of decline and the destructive effects of political chaos. The only documents that might help us understand that period are books remaining from Tushanwan, such as Simple Explanation of Painting and Studies in Pencil Drawing. These books explain sketching, perspective, human anatomy for oil painting, and watercolor techniques. These texts provided model drawings for the orphans to trace or copy.
Among the students of Tushanwan was Xu Yongqing (1880-1953), who right after his graduation used materials that put him outside of tradition. He opened a watercolor studio and turned out commercial illustrations. Xu Yongqing never gave up his studies of traditional ink art, but even at the age of 60 he was willing to learn Western painting techniques from Liu Dezhai. He was quite sensitive to the pictures and icons that were to be seen everywhere along streets and alleys; he was willing to design and execute pictures for commercial use—cover designs and illustrations, landscapes, portraits, and other commercial paintings, whether landscape, human figure or portrait. In the artworks and applied commercial art that appeared in the colonial city of Shanghai, whether as backdrops for photography studios, stage sets, or as advertising pictures, one could see that within a limited context, the rich expressiveness of perspective, chiaroscuro, physical structure, and abundant color were coming into acceptance.
The idea of illustrated monthly calendars (yuefen pai) can be traced back to 1876 with advertisements for such calendars appearing in the Shanghai newspaper, Shenbao. Early in the century, monthly calendar paintings emerged as an integration of traditional ink art and Western techniques from the brushes of painters who pursued innovation in art. As painters grew in their ability to exploit this medium, monthly calendar paintings constituted the most widespread form of imagery to be seen in everyday life. The resulting calendar paintings—accessible and expressive of new urban life—proved popular. Although traditional calendar woodcuts and the ubiquitous advertising illustrations provided the ‘genes’ of monthly calendar paintings, only the transmission of Western art methods could have stimulated the birth of this new painting form. In fact, the process that gave birth to this style of painting was a reconciliation of tradition and Westernization. It allowed people of this period to undergo gradual, ongoing change in their visual habits. The most important artists producing these calendar illustrations were Zhou Muqiao, also thought to be the most representative of the early monthly calendar painters, Zheng Mantuo, whose works were described as ‘foreign calendar paintings’ and who ushered in the true heyday of monthly calendar paintings, and Hang Xiying whose way of combining advertising design with monthly calendar paintings made him a model for other painters at the time. Market demand and his confidence in his own painting eventually led him to set up his own famous studio. He accepted apprentices and hired colleagues to specialize in commercial design and calendar art. Li Mubai and Ji Xuechen were both members of his studio. Among calendar painters who were active in the 1930s we can enumerate names like Ding Yunxian, Hu Baixiang, Xie Zhiguang, Jin Meisheng, and Zhang Biwu. As monthly calendar paintings developed, painters used more implements and materials of Western painting. Relying on their gifts of observation, a great many calendar painters made wide use of Western technique to paint Chinese subjects. In the future this would have an effect on new calendar paintings and other types of Chinese-inflected new painting. Decades later, when Xu Beihong looked back at the early stage of the new art movement, he made this evaluation: ‘Tushanwan was the cradle of Western painting in China’.
TRADITIONAL THOUGHT AND THE ACCOMMODATION OF CALLLIGRAPHY AND PAINTING
Western influence and China’s naval defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 prompted deep reflection among the brightest thinkers at the court. In 1898, Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909), the official in charge of foreign affairs during the Guangxu reign, issued Exhortation to Study in which he called on people to study diligently and emulate the West, and prepare lucid and well-argued popular academic reading materials. For the court he clearly differentiated between “new” (Western) and “old” (Chinese) knowledge. He also made clear what viewpoint he thought the Chinese should adopt: ‘The Four Books, The Five Classics, China’s histories, works on statecraft and ancient maps are all “old studies”; Western politics, Western arts, and Western history constitute “new studies”. The old studies form the corpus of tradition, but the new studies are practical and cannot be neglected’. (Exhortation to Study, ‘Implementing Study’, Chapter 3)
Of course, the changes in the intellectual climate in the late-Qing period were extremely complex and academic debate was in the main limited to the confines of the Han and Song interpretations of the Confucian texts. This had a complex intellectual history, and those taking part in the raging debates which gripped intellectuals could never be simply classified as falling into the school of Han studies, Song studies, or the New Text schools. The schools evolved and divided in response to different times and different situations. Yet, prior to the 1898 Reforms, ‘Han studies, Song studies, and the New Text schools, in accordance with actual demands of statecraft, effected compromises’.[9] These had the aim of bringing order to government in times of turmoil. From an ethical standpoint, most people could have an inner expectation that society and the nation were waiting for reform that would facilitate healthy development, but complex conflicts of ethnicity, interests, and civilization frequently toppled the walls of that fragile morality. Like Confucian civilization, Western civilization was itself a naturally self-sufficient structure; what complicated matters was the situation whereby a missionary could provide an item of knowledge drawn from Western civilization, but how was this isolated item able to play a rational role within another system of civilization that was undergoing a process of complex change? History provides so many examples of how a chance misunderstanding or conflict can bring about total rejection or conflict within a specific context in another civilization. At different times, changes ranging from politics, economics, military matters, to the entire material transformation of social life saw a change from a categorical rejection of Western studies, to the pretense that Western studies had originated in China, a view favored by the Kangxi Emperor, to the call for new studies that were practical. The result of these changes in approach brought about social changes, at the same time as they reflected them.
Resembling the complex debates raging in intellectual circles regarding ‘the Confucian tradition’ (daotong) or ‘the orthodox tradition’ (zhengtong), theoretical divisions also appeared in calligraphy and painting circles, for example the ramifications of Dong Qichang’s arguments about southern and northern traditions of painting, and according to individuals’ personal tastes and inclinations, notions of ‘orthodoxy’ (zheng) and ‘heterodoxy’ (xie) gradually emerged. Ordinarily for those who venerated the painters of ‘the southern school’ (nanzong) the northern school was ‘heterodox’, and this viewpoint had held ever since Dong Qichang first proposed the theory of southern and northern schools. The basic reason for this state of affairs was the high regard for ‘literati’ tastes emanating from the literati class. Put simply, the southern school had come to be seen as an encapsulation of literati tastes and as having a line of continuity harking back to the ‘spirit of the idea’ or ‘ideational spirit’ (yiqi) proposed by Su Dongpo and others. The taste of the northern school was regarded as somewhat cruder, as described in the Ming dynasty by Shen Hao (1586-1661): ‘Chan Buddhism and painting both have southern and northern schools, and at the same time as they are separate their spirit is also diametrically opposed….The northern school is structured on the painting style of Li Sixun, which is strident and unique and is executed with urgency and toughness, but painters such as Zhao Gan, Boju, Bosu, Ma Yuan, and Xia Gui, down to Dai Wenjin, Wu Xiaoxian, and Zhang Pingshan exemplify a mediocre inheritance of his tradition’. From: Hua Chen
This critical ranking and categorization naturally comes with the hallmark of individual taste or authority. Later, in arguments discussing painting and in the practice of calligraphy and painting, the concept of ‘heterodoxy’ was applied to painting that lacked clear sources and such a situation hampered and vexed people. By the beginning of the Republican period, the spirit and practice of these long chewed over traditional principles of painting were simply summarized by those with Western learning as hackneyed, so that ‘for the entire three hundred years of the Qing dynasty there was no painting’, to quote Chen Xiaodie.
However, in fact, when Western studies had not yet been introduced to China’s traditional academies, there was debate regarding the position and authority of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heterodoxy’, and the artistic tastes and advantages of these relative positions. Yet, when confronted with the entry to China of Western art and when traditional painting and the foreign painting from the West were compared, especially in the encounter between ideas and standpoints, the different standpoints of each tradition all tended to lose their antagonistic edge and impact, as in the following evaluation of Western painting by the painter and salt merchant Zheng Ji (1813-1874), recorded in Menghuan-ju Huaxue Jianming:
Now in foreign paintings, we see neither brush-work nor ink; only the shapes of objects are selected and given the semblance of life. Confucian scholarly painters pay careful attention to the techniques of ink and brush. They may draw the outline of an object, concealing the internal force of its spirit and differentiating its external features. If the work is vigorous and powerful, its dimensions may have the strength of Taishan Mountain or of the mighty Yangtze; if the work is unadorned and leisurely, the paper may simply evoke the flow of autumn streams or a patch of sky. Then there are works like Ma Yuan’s portrait of the deity Guan Di, which can conjure up his ferocity with only a few simple strokes for eyebrows. Glorious is the millennia-old tradition that can be so succinct. Surely this is something of which foreign painting could never even dream?
Anyone who understood Western art could see that such criticism was wide of the mark. Zheng Ji had received a traditional Confucian education from childhood and was well versed in calligraphy and poetry, and this background determined that while he lived in Xinhui in Guangdong it is apparent that he was oblivious of the ‘China trade paintings’ that were all the rage in the nearby coastal areas of Guangdong and Macau at that time, or of even anything interesting about Western painting. In general, those within the world of traditional painting, regardless of the position they adopted in debate, never ventured beyond the bounds of defending China’s traditions of calligraphy and painting, and when Western art and its accompanying ideas flooded into Chinese cities and revolutionaries emerged in political and intellectual circles, it is easy to understand how in cultural circles extreme positions calling for the defence of tradition or for ‘complete Westernization’ emerged.
In the same way as Zhang Zhidong spoke of ‘Western arts’ (xiyi) in his Exhortation to Study, Liang Qichao also used the term ‘Western arts’, as for example in his Table of Books on Western Studies. However, believing their own research on Western art to be limited, their understanding of Western art could largely be likened to their use of vocabulary that evoked that used to describe the efforts of missionary painters of the late-Ming period, which lumped together all Western art from the Renaissance to the eve of Impressionist painting and did not mention any debates about different styles that existed within this misperceived art. However, the mention of this art did to some extent set it apart from traditional arguments about painting and questions of schools, and the new vocabulary showed the possibility of new paths of understanding. In fact, the problem remained as follows: If the knowledge generated by new studies and by Chinese studies was so different, and Zhang Zhidong and others clarified the differences and capacities of ‘Chinese studies’ and ‘Western studies’, then what methods could facilitate interchange and understanding between these two different civilizations? In fact, from the time when missionaries first proselytized Western culture, they and the Chinese literati had failed to find a methodology which could accommodate these two systems of civilization; Castiglione, for example, could only do his utmost to preserve his own painting methods as long as he served the demands of taste imposed by the emperor. Basically speaking, in the history of pre-modern and modern art in China, ‘synthesis’, ‘eclecticism’, and ‘combination’ largely characterized the technical contest that arose to meet the demands of accommodation within different art systems. The missionaries maintained their proselytizing ideals, and made the appropriate adjustments in themes, colors, shading, and scale to satisfy the demands placed upon them, while Chinese painters because of their background education and training as well as the tools and methods with which they were familiar also had difficulty in obviously changing their own painting tastes and methods.
Responding to changes in traditional thinking was a new discovery within the tradition. In the late-Qing period, intellectuals applied distinctions between ‘new’ and ‘old’ to the evolution of traditional scholarship. Kang Youwei, for example, made the distinction between epigraphy based on rubbings and style manuals which he characterized as ‘old learning’ and the more ‘aesthetic’ epigraphy based on the examination of inscriptions on stone characterized as ‘new studies’. The 19th century discipline of epigraphy focused on stelae inscriptions (beixue) grew out of an earlier epigraphy (jinshi-xue) which examined ancient inscriptions on all materials and also indicated a greater concern with and appreciation of morphology and style which also laid the foundation for a fresh understanding of ancient art. Epigraphic research originated in the Northern Song, but it was basically confined to the meaning, forms, systems, evolution, shapes, and styles of ancient inscriptions on metal and stone, extending back to classical and historical exegesis and textual context, and extending down to art appreciation’.[10] In other words, from the Northern Song to the Qing dynasty, epigraphy served as an auxiliary to historical research, and the investigation of these historical artifacts augmented lacunae in the textual historical record, serving to correct mistakes in the historical accounts of different dynasties. By the mid-Qing, the interest of scholars had begun to focus on the artistic value of the epigraphs, and so from augmenting history epigraphy evolved into the newer discipline of beixue which emphasized artistic appreciation and critique. From the conclusions about epigraphic works acquired from archaeological excavation, Northern Wei stelae became the focus of beixue. These inscribed rocks recovered from cliffs, buildings, fields, and wild locations awakened a fresh interest in epigraphy among scholars; the antiquated, awkward, and vigorous style of the Northern Wei inscriptions gave rise to a fresh new style of calligraphy. This new interest in the ancient past initially made its impact on calligraphy, and many calligraphers generated new styles based on the writing style seen in inscriptions of the Han and Wei period. The earlier interest in fine and delicate calligraphic styles now gave way to styles revealed through epigraphy, and this new approach to brush art gradually also effected a change in painting styles. Deng Shiru (1743-1805) was the earliest calligrapher to create a new style of brushwork based on the epigraphy of the Qin-Han period. Given that painting and calligraphy are two aspects of the single corpus of ink art, practice in the zhuan (seal script) and li (clerical script) calligraphic styles discovered through epigraphy gradually led to the rise of a robust group of epigraphic calligraphers and painters, of whom Yi Bingshou, Jin Nong, Gui Fu, and Chen Hongshou are some of the earliest exponents. By the late-Qing period, the ‘new tradition’ had led to rich results in painting and calligraphy. With intellectual currents emanating from beixue and the fashion for epigraphic painting flourished and many calligraphers and painters quite different from those prior to the mid-Qing emerged.
EARLY CHINESE STUDENTS OVERSEAS
The late-Qing government was in an inextricable political crisis. Although Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao became fugitives for their role in the abortive reforms of 1898, less than two years later, when the Empress Dowager Cixi and her officials fled to Xi’an from the Eight-Power Allied Armies, she had no choice but to prompt the Emperor Guangxu to issue a reform edict. A crucial part of the reforms was the educational restructuring based on the ‘Memorial on Transforming Government by Giving Priority to Developing Talents, with Proposals Tendered upon Imperial Request’, which was one of the ‘Three Joint Memorials from Jiangsu, Hunan, and Hubei’ written by Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi. The government began an all-out program to motivate young people to study abroad and pursue studies in the new-style academies.[11] In 1904 Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Baixi, and Rong Qing drafted the ‘Memorial to Set up Academy Charters’, academy charters being educational codes. In the following year, the government announced that the imperial examination system would be totally dismantled in 1906. As a result, not only was the continued transmission of Confucian classics plunged into total crisis but the intellectual foundation of the original power structure was profoundly shaken. The image of the Chinese intellectual as a scholar-official or would-be scholar-official henceforth changed. Intellectuals no longer stayed close to their home districts, because they no longer needed to participate locally in the hierarchically ascending civil examination. Foreign capital made inroads and the industries that emerged as part of the Westernization movement, along with the urban trades they brought into being, caused society’s divisions of labor to grow rapidly more complex. People discovered that by possessing the new knowledge, they could each become useful members of society. The long-term efforts of missionaries and the mass of printed material put out by private and official agencies caused the media to become a focus of attention for scholars, who took various newspapers and magazines to modern salon-like meeting halls and academies, where they passed them around, discussed them, and judged their merits. What is more, their lively meetings, which were so charged with a sense of regeneration, gave rise to new thinking and led to the formation of organized groups, until eventually out of this came concrete political, cultural, or other social action.
In fact, the outcome of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 had a decisive influence on China’s Manchu government and on ordinary young people. China’s defeat and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki wounded the self-esteem of China’s scholar-official class more than anything had before. Rational intellectuals petitioned the imperial court to learn from the Japanese. The first group of Chinese students sent to Japan embarked in 1896, and by about 1907 the number of young Chinese studying in Japan had already reached 20,000. Among them, of course, were young Chinese who went to Japan to study ‘Western art’.
Among the early overseas students, those whose systematic study of Western art can be documented are Li Tiefu, Feng Gangbai, Li Yishi, and Li Shutong.
We do not know if the first stop in the travels of Li Tiefu (1869-1952) was America or not, but documents record that he received an art education in Canada, then part of the British Empire. Li spent nine years as a student in Canada. Li Tiefu took part in activities of Sun Yat-sen’s political revolution; starting in 1909, he served as standing secretary of the Tongmenghui’s New York office for six years. This painter’s committed role in a revolutionary party revealed his political enthusiasm and idealism, and his realist paintings were close to Western taste.
As Li Tiefu’s classmate at New York Academy of Arts, Feng Gangbai (1883-1984) also gained an opportunity to study abroad in the process of seeking a livelihood. Feng Gangbai entered Mexico City’s National Art College in 1905 to study oil painting. Five years later he went to San Francisco. In 1912, upon entering the Student Art Research Society of the New York Academy of Art, his studies of oil painting technique went deeper. He saw a great many renowned works and reproductions, among which we can cite works by the American painters Thomas Eakins, William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, and Robert Henri, behind whom was the European tradition of realism. When he was in New York someone there informed him that Peking University president Cai Yuanpei was inviting painters back to teach in China, Feng Gangbai returned to Guangzhou in the early autumn of 1921. What ensued was quite different from what happened to Li Tiefu. Feng Gangbai’s seventeen years of overseas study made him one of the first painters to transmit knowledge of Western painting within China. In fact, the painter’s subjects were just ordinary persons, still life objects, or landscapes, and he was concerned with them as ‘things’ in their own right. He incorporated this concern into his teaching and through his students spread it further. Gradually, for those who were fed up with trivial exercises of the ink brush, in the process of focusing on such ‘things’ and of understanding light in physical nature rather than as an abstract concept, a fundamental change was underway in their perceptions, and eventually their ideas, about nature and society.
Li Yishi (1886-1942) went with his brother in 1903 to Japan, where he studied first at a law school and then at an officers’ school. Not until 1907, when he passed the entrance examination of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts did he begin his strict Western academic training in painting. Li Yishi’s family background was different from Li Tiefu and Feng Gangbai, who went abroad to earn a living. Li’s father was a painter, and his uncle Li Baojia (1867-1906) was the author of an important late-Qing satirical novel, Officialdom Shows Its True Face. His painting titled Palace Enmity, completed in 1931, had the sub-title, She Leans on the Censer Canopy, Sitting up Till Dawn, and like other Chinese painters, Li Yishi found inspiration in lines from ancient poems, and it can be seen that Li Yishi was interested above all in adopting realist methods in trying to express a Chinese poetic atmosphere.
Li Shutong (1880-1942), who went to study in Japan in 1905, was a native of Pinghu in Zhejiang, and later he lived in Tianjin. His father was a banker, and his family background made it easy to receive an excellent education. Along with being adept at poetry, seals, and calligraphy, Li Shutong evinced a fancy free temperament that contrasted strongly with his decision in 1918 to shave his head and become a monk. In 1905, Li Shutong traveled to Japan with a group of young men and women. Because he did not arrive in time for that year’s entrance examination, he did not enter Tokyo Fine Arts School (now Tokyo Fine Arts University) until the following year.
Li Shutong’s teacher was the most influential plein air painter of the Meiji period, Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924). Knowing this, it is easy to understand why we find impressionist-style landscapes among Li Shutong’s oil paintings. At the same time, he also went to a music vocational school to study piano and composing, and studied stage plays under mentorship of the dramatist Fujisawa Asajirō. While in Japan he and Ouyang Yuqian organized the Spring Willow Troupe (Chunliu Jushe); Li went on to play the female protagonists Marguerite in Lady of the Camellias and Emily in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Activities of the Spring Willow Troupe had an impact on the theater back in China, and even led to the genesis of ‘spoken drama’ in China. At the same time Li Shutong founded Little Magazine of Music and wrote compositions himself. People can still derive enjoyment from his songs:
Past the way station, beside an ancient road, fragrant grass is green against the sky.
Late wind caresses willows; flute sound grieves hills beyond hills at sunset,
At the edge of sky, in this corner of earth, half my close ties have fallen away,
A pot of dregs to finish the revels, dreams at parting make the night feel cold.[12]
In this lyric the sadness is stirred by contrast of mundane time with enduring nature, which touches clearly on the inner state of intellectuals of that era, while revealing Li Shutong’s particular temperament. Such a temperament was an important reason that he later left the realm of red dust to become a monk. In the memoirs of his student Feng Zikai, we get a sense of Li Shutong’s gifts as a teacher: in teaching students to sketch plaster models, in taking them outdoors to draw from life, and in teaching Western art history (he compiled Lecture Materials on Western Art History), he was among the path breakers. His use of human models as a teaching method for classes at Zhejiang Junior and Superior Normal School shows his bold uninhibited character. Along with Liu Haisu’s precedent of using naked models for classes, this marked a pivotal event in the history of China’s 20th century art.[13]
PAINTING SOCIETIES AND THE MARKET
In the elegant prose of Preface to Orchid Pavilion by Wang Xizhi (321-379), people can appreciate the setting and atmosphere of the ‘elegant gatherings’ (yaji) attended by ancient scholars. On the third day of the third month, on a late spring day in the mid-fourth century during the Eastern Jin dynasty, Wang Xizhi and a group of renowned scholars gathered in the Orchid Pavilion at the foot of Kuaiji Mountain in southern China. The scholars perpetuated an ancient tradition of making sacrifices to the deity of the waters by way of purification, and at the core of this ritual was the floating of libation cups on a leisurely winding stream. As Wang Xizhi watched the cups bobbing on the stream, he gazed up and was transported: ‘The clear rushing water reflects the sunlight as it passes either side of the pavilion. The guests are seated side by side as they play the drinking game in which the beaker is set free to float downstream and where it stops the person there must drink from it. Although no ensemble plays, cups of wine and the reciting of poetry accompany the cordial conversations. The sky is bright and the air is crisp; a gentle breeze blows freely. Looking up, one can encompass the vastness of the heavens; looking down, one observes the abundance of things. The contentment of allowing one’s gaze to wander transports one to the delights of sight and sound. Such joy!’
Such transcendental gatherings were the preserve of the literati, who perpetuated this tradition. In the Southern Song the lyric poet and scholar Hong Mai wrote in the opening lines of his poem Man Jiang Hong: ‘The spring purification ritual finds us on a picnic, but I do not know the origins of the story of the floating wine cups’. This demonstrates that customs had changed since the time of Wang Xizhi, and that such elegant gatherings had also undergone a change. In 1758, a salt commissioner from Yangzhou called Lu Jianzeng held such a gathering, which he called the ‘Spring Purification of Rainbow Bridge’. To this elegant gathering the salt merchant Wang Di was invited and even though he was highly skilled in composing poetry and prose, his status as a literatus was conferred, not earned, even though he held a doctorate position at the State Academy. This event took place in Yangzhou, underscoring the city’s close links with highly developed mercantilism: merchants venerated Confucian education and its attendant elegance and scholars who devoted themselves to calligraphy and painting required payment for their works. Given the demands of such exchange, artistic sensibilities also changed; the development of commerce and economic support, as well as artists catering to the tastes of merchants were the basic conditions that led to the formation of the Yangzhou school of painters. Following the opening of five treaty ports by the 1842 Nanjing Treaty and the devastation of the cities of the Yangtze River basin by the Taiping Rebel armies, merchants fled to Shanghai or began to congregate there and these literati painters also made their way to this thriving commercial port in order to make a living.
Shanghai Ink Grove, published in 1920, can be seen as a brief history of fine arts in China. The writer Yang Yi compiled short biographies of several hundred painters from the Song to the Qing eras, but most were late-Qing figures, from the Tongzhi and Guangxu reigns. In his preface, Gao Yong wrote the following:
South and north of the Yangtze, there are countless persons cultivated in calligraphy and painting. As for lofty recluses who live in the countryside, we cannot know of them, but those who pack up their brushes and head off to where reputations are made will surely reach Shanghai. Shanghai has a rich concentration of cultural artifacts; there can be found earnest and guileless persons who believe in the Way, are fond of ancient things, and ply their brushes proficiently. From among them emerge famous men in each generation. Since they share this refined interest, extended groups of their kind will tend to gather. This trend arose approximately one hundred years ago.
In one way or another, gatherings of calligraphers and painters quite naturally led to the popular phenomenon of setting up cultural societies. The painter Gao Yong recorded:
I have heard that back in the Qianlong and Jiaqing periods, when Supervisor Li Jingting, known as ‘Weizhuang’ (Savor Zhuang-zi), of Cangzhou was garrisoning troops in Shanghai, he promoted refined activities.[14] Anyone who was skilled in calligraphy, poetry, or painting would be invited to the Pingyuan Mountain Lodge. The flourishing salon they had was extolled by all in the land. In 1839 the gentleman recluse Jiang Baoling, known as Xiazhu (‘Afterglow Bamboo’), of Yushan came to Shanghai to spend a cool summer.[15] He assembled all the celebrated scholars at Little Penglai. Not a day passed when his guests did not sit in rows and wield their brushes. These were perhaps the prototype for calligraphy and painting societies. Later, Master of Letters Wu Guanyun of my hometown went on to initiate a painters’ group called the ‘Duckweed Flower Society’ (Pinghua She) here in Shanghai. Celebrated figures of Zhejiang all gathered around him at that time.[16]
The emergence of painters’ groups and societies showed that painters and calligraphers, who lived amidst an unraveling natural economy, were establishing an independent identity and facing problems of livelihood. Aside from maintaining the traditional literati taste for refined gatherings as a way of life, there was an important reason for the societies: it was hoped they would provide strength in numbers, in the manner of guilds or labor unions, to guarantee a livelihood in a changing society. As a result, articles touching on painters’ interests became important parts in the charters of painters’ groups and societies. In the ‘Founders’ Record and Charter of the Yu Garden Calligraphy and Painting Society’, we can read the following:
Rates for calligraphy: Vertical whole-sheet pieces of four feet or less—one silver dollar; if over four feet—half a silver dollar for each additional foot. Sheet lengths of over six feet will be negotiated separately. For horizontal pieces add half again to the vertical rate. For hand scrolls each foot (and for albums each page) will be half a silver dollar, as will silk fans; screen panels will be half as much again. If the same text cannot be used for plaques, funeral screens, and memorial essays, then payment will be given for each separate text. Rates for painting will be double those for calligraphy. Other types of painting and calligraphy will be negotiated separately. Upon the founding of this society, it was resolved that calligraphy would include the cauldron inscription style, small seal style, clerical style, scribe style, cursive regular style, and grass style; painting would include landscapes, flowers and plants, portraits of mature men and high-born women, and depictions of flying creatures and running beasts. All should be done in collaboration. Even when a piece is occasionally done alone, the inscription should be written by another hand, not only to give another perspective, but to allow each person to show his strength. Moreover, most painters must till the ink-stone field for a living, and thus must first predetermine a method that is optimal both for the public and private side. Thus we can persist in our sincere efforts for mutual betterment. Hereupon we resolve: half of payments received will go into the society’s funds and half to the painter or calligrapher. Occasionally if an individual is specifically commissioned to complete a work, then the compensation will be his own and will have nothing to do with our organization.[17]
Prior to the late-Qing, the formation of such societies had, in fact, been largely based on shared taste and political views. As far back as the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties period, the ‘Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove’ had set the pattern for a purely intellectual gathering. In 1686, during the Kangxi reign, the authorities issued an edict doing away with ‘literary societies and schools’ (she-xue), but ‘refined gatherings’ have always been held frequently by various circles among literati and ruling elites. But when a mission statement, charter or organizational system endorsed by the participants constitutes the reason for convening, then a ‘refined gathering’ becomes a strategically conceived social group with utilitarian aims. The Feidan Pavilion Calligraphy and Painting Society which emerged at Deyue Pavilion in Yu Garden initiated a trend of groups combining shared taste and joint interests. Over time, this painters’ group could claim many famous members: Wang Li, Wu Qingyun, Hu Yuan, Ni Tian (Mo Geng), Yang Borun, Ren Yu, Zhang Xiong, Pu Hua, Wu Changshuo, and Wu Youru. What had been a facility for painting activities in this case became a guildhall. Feidan Pavilion also served as a guest house and a sales outlet. Owing to complex interests exerting pressure from various directions, the Feidan Pavilion Calligraphy and Painting Society, although retaining the characteristics of a traditional refined gathering, in fact had business and market-manipulating functions. After 1840, painters’ societies that had the characteristics of commercial interest groups included: Feidan Pavilion Calligraphy and Painting Society (1862-1899), Haishang Tijinguan Epigraphy, Calligraphy, and Painting Society (1885-1908), Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Collective (1900), Wenming Calligraphy and Painting Gathering (1875-1911), Yuyuan Calligraphy and Painting Benevolent Society (1909), Wanmi Shanfang Calligraphy and Painting Society (1909), Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Research Association (1910), Qingyiguan Calligraphy and Painting Society (1911), Shanghai Wenmei Society (1912), Perseverance Society (Zhen she, 1912), Regeneration Society (Zhenqing She, 1914), Oriental Painting Society (1915), and Guangcang Study Society (1916).
THE SHANGHAI SCHOOL AND PAINTERS
Ontologically speaking, the evolution within culture and the arts was relatively independent, and the entry of epigraphy into calligraphy and painting can be seen as an internal development within the arts, yet social changes and the increase in the number of merchants and urban dwellers were external factors controlling and influencing the work of calligraphers and painters, so much so that for the scholar-official concerned with the nation’s fate, national affairs of the late 19th century were in a state of deep crisis. In their writing we find many expressions of indignation: ‘Mountains and rivers are partitioned as our nation is picked apart’ (Kang Youwei); ‘we have gradually been driven into a deep pit’ (Liang Qichao); and ‘where along the horizon is our Divine Land?’ (Tan Sitong). As Liu E wrote in the opening chapter of his novel Travels of Lao Can,‘The land is not well managed, so floods become a yearly scourge, and wind-driven waves are a danger everywhere’. Thus the majority of literati and intellectuals were in no mood to use the rhetoric of detachment and inner care-freeness to describe their reality.
Artists always keep their feelers out. A representative early figure in the late-Qing Shanghai School named Ren Xiong, in the Self-Portrait he completed in 1856 shortly before his death, presented his uneasy psychological state in visual form. Although the figure in the painting appears to have strength and physical prowess, the painting gives no indications of a direction for such power. The figure’s appearance expresses a state of psychological conflict and indecision.
The term Shanghai School (Haipai) was once a term of ridicule, used for quite some time by conservative elites.[18] Regarding why this term came into use, we need to look at changes in social life after the port of Shanghai was opened.[19] Opening the five treaty ports of Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai to trade (after the Nanjing Treaty of 1842) led to an influx of foreign commodities in great quantities. People’s sense of a changed environment came through seeing, using, and trying to copy these strange commodities. From November 1843 onwards, England, the United States, and France established concessions in Shanghai. As a result, capitalist productive modes and the market economy began their inexorable destruction of the traditional, natural economy. The new environment—the new way of life brought about by industry and technology, by their products, and by finance and commerce—further distanced people from the natural setting that could induce a mood of detachment.
The term ‘Haipai’ (‘Shanghai School’) first appeared in The Pacific Pictorial, and it referred to those painters from Zhejiang, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Anhui, Changzhou, and Nanjing, who painted in individual styles, and because the artistic sensibilities of those who collected these painters differed, they in turn influenced the styles and artistic sensibilities of these painters. From this we can see that the ‘Haipai’ painters were not simply defined by style and provenance, but were in fact those painters using traditional Chinese painting implements who after 1842 were part of a new cultural movement of Shanghai. Because most works by these ‘Haipai’ painters expressed the popular themes that characterized urban taste, many defenders of traditional taste and thought were highly suspicious of this ‘Shanghai School’. The art historian Yu Jianhua (b.1895), for example, wrote this in his History of Chinese Painting:
In the Tongzhi and Guangxu reigns, the situation grew increasingly dire and the fashions in painting became more fluid, with more painters taking up residence in Shanghai and selling paintings to support themselves. The pressures of earning a living forced them to paint things for which they had no passion, and to have broad commercial appeal the quality of the paintings became unavoidably banal, lascivious, or bombastic, and these became the characteristics of the Shanghai School.
Ren Xiong (1820-1857) was one of the ‘Three Xiongs’ of the Shanghai School.[20] He derived much benefit from his study of paintings by Chen Hongshou, but changes in society inevitably made an impact on a painter who had in fact absented himself from nature. The figures in his paintings denote a break with traditional expression, even though the change has not transformed the familiar traditional brush techniques. Moreover, the relation of such brushwork to the subject being portrayed suggests conflict. Some art historians have noted that the characteristics of Ren Xiong’s portrayals of figures perhaps give such an impression because the painter, in representing the personality traits of his figures, shows a wish to approach visual faithfulness in his works. Ren Xiong did not seem to have given much thought to the lofty vantage points and distant prospects to which viewers were accustomed, and concerned himself instead with green shade trees and scenes of lush vegetation. The painter focused his attention on perception and vision, a fact which is especially evident in Shiwan Scene. He did not bother with discrete literati taste, nor did he take pains to present real-life scenic views. He would simply paint boulders, ravines, and creeks on their own, applying his energy to achieve a decorative effect. Shiwan Scene is painted on cardstock dusted with a gold finish, making it clear that he aimed to achieve a dazzling effect with his paintings. Such taste was consistent with the demands of the businessmen who bought his works. At this point, the literati’s realm of attainment was not important, for the key point was visual pleasure. Ren Xiong’s brother Ren Xun (1835-1893) was similar in his tastes, and he likewise did not base his work on symbols of transcendent or pensive moods; instead, he was more concerned with unique visual effects realized through brushwork. Thus in his treatment of plants, his colors were vivid, and his touch was relaxed and emotionally unburdened. Even in the making of a single stroke, the gradient of color saturation from brush tip to mid-brush was a central fascination for him and his customers. In figural works he too painted in the vein of Chen Hongshou, but he did away with grotesquerie in rendering human subjects. In his laying out of settings and rendering of trees, flowers, and succulents, he showed even more freshness. Old time merchants, especially in cities like Yangzhou, had more traditional rules and habits of appreciation. They still viewed pure detachment and rusticity as standards of taste. But, at this point, merchants of the metropolis were fond of luxury and splendor. In a social setting where the Western pictures and goods seen here and there had produced a newly pragmatic outlook, people welcomed an effect of fullness, strength, resplendence, and intensity.
Zhao Zhiqian (1829-1884), a native of Shanyin (Shaoxing) in Zhejiang, was regarded as a major epigraphic calligrapher and painter. In his early years he studied epigraphy under the local master Shen Xiaxi, and later he went to the capital searching education in ancient epigraphic styles and there he found inspiration in the ‘clumsy and forceful’ styles of Jin Nong and Deng Shiru, although Zhao’s own style was ‘rounded and robust’. As a result, Kang Youwei wrote of him that he ‘through studying the Northern Wei, he formed his own school, yet his style remained feeble. Today people often talk about the Northern Wei style, yet this talk is mostly fatuous because it is mostly imitation Zhao’.[21] Yet most scholars approved of the calligraphy of Zhao Zhiqian. He was one of those who innovated by stressing the ‘epigraphic style’ in calligraphy and painting. Zhao in his youth had wanted to become a scholar-official and because he had been deeply influenced by the fashion for epigraphic studies in Beijing, and while he did not succeed in his original career path, he also did not choose the alternative path of going to Shanghai to earn a living, and so his painting and calligraphy do not exhibit the more excessively vulgar aspects of the Shanghai School. His focus on introducing the epigraphic style to painting meant that he altered familiar modes of composition, and his use of brush strokes taken from seal script and clerical script influenced the way he painted the branches of trees; in his themes, he also eschewed ancient styles and adopted content from more popular propitious paintings deemed to confer good fortune.
Xugu (‘Empty Valley’) (1823-1896), whose original name was Zhu Huairen, died before Wu Changshuo. He was one of the Shanghai School painters whose deep grounding in technique did not preclude inventiveness. Just as the name he adopted suggests—Empty Valley—he seemed intent upon hiding his origins. People have raised doubts as to his birth date, his surname, and his native place. Yet his years of military life followed by the adoption of his monk’s name (1853) indicate an interesting range of experiences. His stays in Yangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai put him in touch with many poets. Along the way he painted and did calligraphy for his own pleasure, but because he lacked a source of income, he also sold paintings for a living. Many people thought that his search for enlightenment as a Zen practitioner gave him a solitary, detached air even in commercialized Shanghai. At the sight of his paintings, people would even make remarks such as ‘he seems to be above the workaday world’. Xugu himself admitted:
With the cold of poverty bred into my bones, I fend for myself;
These paintings of plum blossoms are hardly an accident.
With a little idle time, I paint three thousand sheets,
Like a beggar in this world, to get money for my rice.[22]
In the genre of flower and bird paintings, Xugu’s range of expression exceeded other painters. He was fond of using cut-off brush, dry brush, worn brush, and brush tip; of making strokes from unexpected angles; and of interspersing strokes with various dilutions of ink to find a taste all his own. Compared to Ren Bonian and Wu Changshuo, Xugu’s style gives no obvious impression of playing up to others. He was disgusted with the conflicts and score-settling of mundane life, to the point that he called himself a ‘weary crane’. It was this temperament that sustained Xugu’s art. Being alive was the important thing, and daily life was filled with charms. He apparently hoped, in the setting of mundane society, to reach a transcendent realm. Xugu’s temperament made his quest similar to that of traditional literati, but he distanced himself from the underlying political stance that was often expressed in literati painting. He dispensed with social emblems whereby goldfish or vines symbolized an official promotion, cranes and lingzhi fungi (ganoderma) represented longevity, and peonies represented wealth. Xugu was not about to set himself against the world, and he hoped for nothing more than to please the merchants and urbanites who asked for his paintings.
In the urban crowd of compradors, merchants, and people with even more complex identities, painters tended to establish contacts with those who could pay for paintings. Based on documents, we know that Ren Bonian, Ren Xun, Xugu, Pu Hua, and Wu Changshuo associated with each other in Shanghai in 1875. Were we to follow these painters along Suzhou Creek, we would surely be surprised by the advance of commercialization and urbanization that had transformed the surroundings in which Chinese literati lived. A painter living among the clustered Western buildings of Shanghai, even glimpsed in passing as he hurried past the bustle of Jing’ansi Street trailing his queue, would seem to have been situated in an utterly different world from a village road where one’s thoughts could easily go off and roam with the ancients. As a typical painter of the Shanghai School, Ren Bonian (1840-1896), one of the Three Rens,[23] had at the age of thirty had already won fame in that city. The subjects that he painted were far removed from a holistic natural world, and his concerns rarely strayed beyond a focus on flowers and birds, human figures, and stories from history. This painter’s way of life, as a frequenter of teashops and opium dens, naturally exposed him to the tastes of ordinary city dwellers. The varied techniques and treatments in his works reflected his neglect of ready formulae. Ren Bonian became friends with Ren Xun as early as 1864, and was further influenced by him in rejecting the inertia of precedent. In 1865 Ren Bonian began to sell paintings in the open port of Ningbo, where he was in frequent contact with Ren Xun, with whom he moved in 1868 to Suzhou. In the winter of that same year he then went to Shanghai. Subsequently, Ren Bonian spent most of his time in this metropolis, creating and selling paintings. With his bold outlines he was able to catch a close resemblance of his subjects, and an unending stream of people came asking him for portraits. Xu Beihong, in his praise of Ren Bonian’s Small Portrait of Zhongying at Fifty-six, pointed out Ren’s strength at catching the form and character traits of his human subjects, as well as the exquisite brush technique used in representing them. Ren Bonian’s figure paintings were universally well received. He even took transient moments of life as subject matter for his highly vivid treatments. A great many people took a liking to Ren Bonian’s folksy Chinese paintings, to the point that no one received such broad approval from buyers as he did at the time. In fact, the independent quality of his paintings lies to some extent in his use of Western technique. Ren was perceptive enough to give attention to figural proportions, to nimbleness of brush technique, and to the use of appealing colors. People tended to characterize his work as ‘lively’, ‘breezy’, or ‘fresh’. However, such descriptions demonstrate that Ren Bonian was closer to mass taste than to elite taste.
Wu Changshuo (1844-1927), who practically learned painting side-by-side with Ren Bonian, came by his love of art instinctively, although he was born into a family that had a tradition of poetry, calligraphy, and art. In his early years his family suffered the chaos of the Taiping Rebellion, in which his entire family was displaced and driven from pillar to post and eventually dispersed among masses of wandering refugees. Before 1875, when he appeared in Shanghai, the knowledge he had gained was in no way distinct from that of a litterateur or scholar. No sources indicate that Wu Changshuo took any interest in the Western-style pictures that were to be seen. Friends in his circle were either traditional art collectors or guardians of traditional ethics, who at get-togethers discussed the history and appreciation of poetry, calligraphy, painting, and seals, and so, when Wu Changshuo truly entered the domain of painting, all he could do was elaborate on the traditional subject matter of landscapes, birds, and flowers. The young Wu Changshuo impressed people deeply with his grounding in epigraphy and calligraphy. During his sojourn in Shanghai he was influenced by Zhao Zhiqian, whose bold use of color in painting and calligraphy spurred him on. Moreover, while he was trying to learn how to paint, Ren Bonian unabashedly pointed out a path for him—he should apply his experience with bronze and stone inscriptions to painting, which would give him his own style. This tip turned out to be crucial for Wu, and to a large extent the incorporation of epigraphic calligraphy helped traditional painting expand to its fullest extent.
Wu Changshuo served intermittently in officialdom, which was of course purely for the sake of a livelihood. Not until age 56, when he resigned the magistracy of Andong county, could he devote himself wholly to art. From this time on, he enjoyed considerable renown. Wu Changshuo’s poetry, calligraphy, paintings, and seals show his mastery of tradition in its overall scope. To a great extent, it was this painter’s stamina and ability to synthesize traditional forms that was the basis for his widespread influence. Yet in handling his usual subject matter of plum blossoms, orchids, bamboo, and chrysanthemums—to which he added a fondness for climbing vines, varied with occasional landscapes, figures, and holy images—Wu’s brush style was not bound to imitation. People had already acknowledged his mastery of seal carving and calligraphy, so they did not mind his unrestrained brushwork or planar, abstract compositions. In Wu’s casual subject matter, viewers recognized calligraphic brush techniques and shapes, so naturally they concurred in finding nothing alien there. Even if Wu used vivid colors in his treatment of flowers, this met with the approval of customers who knew the glamorous attractions of the big city.
Wu Changshuo was predisposed to traditional taste. In his life and expression of ideas, he kept quite close to literati habits and ruling-class approaches. Yet his paintings done after 50 reflect an instinctive, perhaps unconscious distancing from these habits and approaches. In his works there is no longer an ‘aloof’ or ‘impassive’ mood, the brushwork is relaxed, the contents ‘auspicious’, and the taste ‘vernacular’. He had no wish to live up to the notion that a painting should ‘have more tears than ink in it’. Influences upon Wu Changshuo were doubtlessly limited to the traditional sphere, and he was barely affected by the political and intellectual currents of his time. He was willing to accommodate the taste of merchants and patrons who could pay for his work, but he did not have much of a response to Western art. He persisted in the tradition that encompassed poetry, calligraphy, painting, and seals, believing that it would live on. Following behind him were young people who were deeply enamored of this tradition, and this strengthened his faith. His famous students — Chen Shizeng, Wang Yiting, Wang Geyi, Pan Tianshou, and indirectly Qi Baishi — proceeded to show that fascinating new effects could still evolve from ink, brush, and paper.
According to one account, Wu Changshuo ‘in middle age went to Shanghai where he presented a seal he carved to a certain military governor, who superciliously dismissed the gift, and so an enraged Wu left Shanghai. He then lived above a shop selling calligraphic works and painted and inscribed fans, one of these fans fetching as much as two hundred cash. He later became acquainted with Wang Yiting, who would often commission Changshuo to carve his inscriptions. In return Wang Yiting would sell paintings on Changshuo’s behalf, and his own paintings were also collected by the Sino-Japanese Shipping Company…’.[24] This account reveals how Wang Yiting was unusual among the painters of the Shanghai School. Born in Shanghai, Wang Yiting (1867-1938), had the given name Zhen and the sobriquet Yiting. In his youth he studied painting under Ren Bonian and in 1913 he was invited by Wu Changshuo from Suzhou to go and live in Shanghai as his pupil. At the same time, Wang Yiting relied on his own contacts in the commercial and political worlds to help Wu Changshuo. Given the respect for Wu Changshuo that flowed from his relationship as a pupil of Wu, we can readily imagine that his style of painting would have resembled that of Wu Changshuo, yet Wang’s themes were richly vernacular and quotidian in artistic sentiment. Being a devout Buddhist, Wang Yiting also frequently painted spirited depictions of arhats, monks, and mudras. Wang Yiting also had an unusual career in that in 1885 he worked for the Sino-Japanese Shipping Company and in 1900 became the Chinese comprador for the Japan Mercantile Osaka Shipping Company. He was also a big investor in commercial and financial circles. In 1911, he joined the Tongmenghui and took part in the Shanghai Uprising in November that year. In 1922 he was selected as Head of the China Buddhist Society and in 1923 as chairman of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce. In 1932, Wang together with Qian Shoutie and a number of other painters donated calligraphy and painting to the anti-Japanese cause of national salvation. Wang Yiting’s background determined his unique position and influence in contemporary calligraphy and painting circles in Shanghai. As a person of experience and as a collector, Wang Yiting played an important and direct role in steering the fashion for Shanghai School painters in the art market.
At the turn of the century the problems faced by China’s traditional painting were similar to those faced by literary language. In fact, this situation can be compared to stylistic changes in literature. On one hand, writing was used to make statements about political and social problems, and thus became a means to educate and rouse the populace. On the other hand, the populace needed a comprehensible written medium to grasp what the writer was saying. Furthermore, a great deal of knowledge from abroad necessitated the use of newly coined terms or translations. Thus a tendency towards plain, common language emerged. The written language used by intellectuals who ran newspapers was most indicative of this trend. Liang Qichao, in his Intellectual Trends of the Qing Period, gave an explanation:
I was never fond of the Tongcheng School of classical prose. In my early youth when starting to write, I imitated late-Han and Wei-Jin models, which I valued for their lapidary style. But when it came to writing for New People’s Miscellany and New Fiction, I liberated myself and strove to be straightforward and fluid. Sometimes I would mix in colloquialisms and foreign usage. I let my pen go without inhibition. I never thought scholars would imitate it and call it a ‘new literary style’. The older generation hated it and ridiculed it as unorthodox. Yet there is order and clarity in this kind of writing; the language is often charged with feeling. Readers have found that it has a certain magical appeal.[25]
Thus, straightforward expression was now also appropriate for the changed demands placed on painting. Yet, the style of the art of the Shanghai School was fundamentally part of the reassessment of the self in the process that marked the beginning of the disintegration of traditional peasant society, and the most famous painters of the Shanghai School were still conceptually only making their entry into modern society. People were fond of using the term ‘vernacular’ in their analysis of the works of these painters, and we can already see that this was a common characteristic of the painters of the Shanghai School. The relative preponderance of literati sensibilities vis-à-vis urban proclivities in their individual works was determined by the degree of traditional training and ethics of the individual painters. The very rapidity with which steamships and modern weaponry was introduced to China also determined the rapidity with which the traditional landscape paintings of the literati were disappearing. It was not merely the decorative value of flower and bird paintings, but also the rapidity with which they could be executed, that determined their purchase as gifts. The more that merchants and urbanites were steeped in a background of vernacular ethnic arts, the more that mythic subjects like Zhong Kui the Demon Slayer, the Eight Immortals, and legendary beauties were demanded by the customers of new paintings. Bright and fresh colors, simple compositions, and lively brush work met with a favorable psychological response in those colorful and unusual times. The degree to which Western painting techniques were adopted by painters was determined not only by the extent to which they satisfied the mood of the age, but also expressed the extent to which individual painters felt comfortable with revising traditional painting practices to meet complex new demands.
Regardless, the fundamental conditions for maintaining traditional society and culture included a stable social system, a steadfast and self-sacrificing body of literati and scholar-officials, and a largely peaceful, settled social environment. But from 1840 onwards, these conditions no longer existed. State institutions had become unbearably corrupt, and in effect foreign powers signaled that if their might were exerted, the regime would be unable to sustain a single blow. By this time, except for tragic figures like Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong, there were not very many loyal scholar-officials who could step forward to defend this tradition, and even the few did not have adequate ability or means to bring about their goal. To make matters graver, a great many intellectuals began to abandon the traditional literati way of life. The contagion of a new outlook from Japan and the West caused people’s rebellious impulses to germinate, and they took steps to reform or overthrow the corrupt establishment. On top of that, this society where people were denied a livelihood was thrown into further upheaval by the Boxer Rebellion, which the Empress Dowager Ci Xi tried to take advantage of. This complicated China’s many problems and made them more insoluble. In sum, the nation was on the brink of collapse. This outlook was distant indeed from the graceful refinement of a literati gathering, and it had no connection to an ambiance of flower viewing and chanting poems, much less to any mystical temple where discourse could be held on classical books and the Way. At such a time, especially after the Qing government was actually overthrown in 1911, to hear people call for “revolution” and a thorough break with tradition was entirely to be expected.
NOTES:
[1] Ricci, in a memorial which he presented to the Emperor in 1601, wrote as follows: ‘Herewith I present to your Highness one picture of the Heavenly Lord, one picture of the Holy Mother, one copy of the Bible, and a pearl-encrusted cross. Although these items are paltry, they are offered as tribute from the remote West, and so it is hoped they will suffice’. Jiang Zhaowen, in his Poems of Unvoiced History (Wusheng shishi) records it this way: ‘Ricci brought a Catholic image from the Western Regions, namely a woman holding an infant. The facial features and the folds of the clothing are like images in a mirror, and they seem to breathe with life. Our Chinese artisans of the brush cannot come close to works of such poise and exquisite detail’. However, it is open to doubt whether Jiang Zhaowen ever actually saw those images of the ‘Heavenly Lord’ or the ‘woman holding the infant’.
[2] He Gaoji et al tr., Li Maduo Zhongguo zhaji (Matteo Ricci’s notes on China), Zhonghua Shuju, 1983, vol. 2, ch. 9, p. 194.
[3] The Thirteen Factories (Shisan-hang) were mentioned in the Ming dynasty. In the Qing dynasty, the organizations entrusted with conducting foreign trade were termed ‘yanghang’, and gradually the terms ‘shisan-hang’ and ‘yanghang’ (‘foreign factories’) were conflated, even though the number of operating ‘factors’ (i.e. representative companies) increased and lessened at different times, ranging from several dozen down to only a few companies. These establishments served the needs of the increasing numbers of foreign traders, adventurers and travelers for office space and accommodation. In 1716, the English merchants in the Thirteen Factories set up a trading company, and for the next century and more, English trade dominated in the Thirteen Factories. The buildings here were razed by fire several times and rebuilt. In the Second Opium War the buildings of the Thirteen Factories were burned down by the masses, bringing the history of this enclave to an end.
[4] In the 18th and early 19th centuries, we know of ‘Qigua, Pugua, Qiangua, Donggua, Kuigua, Fagua, and Xinggua’, and in the 1830s to the 1860s, we know of such eponyms as ‘Xingua, Tinggua, Yugua, Maogua, Xiangguo, Zhongguo, Zhougua, and Fagua’. The original names of these painters are not known to posterity. Although we can see the distinctions between them in various artworks, they lived and worked largely as artisan-painters in the painting workshops. Regarding that segment of history, we can only look at the overall phenomenon and have no way of ascertaining the biographical details of these painters, which is regrettable.
[5] In 1785 and 1793, for example, the English painter William Daniell (1769-1837) and his uncle Thomas Daniell visited Guangzhou twice; in 1816, the English painter William Havell (1782-1874); in 1838, the English painter William Prinsep (1794-1874); and in 1857, the English watercolorist Charles Wirgman (1835-1891). Other names can be added to this list, such as Anthony Fielding (1787-1855), Dr. Thomas Boswell Watson (1815-1860), and Major-General Phillip Bedingfield (d.1897). All of these painters left scenes of southern Chinese cities, particularly Macau, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, conveying their vision of the country.
[6] Hong Kong Art Museum, Scenes of Coastal Merchant Houses in the 18th and 19th Centuries (18, 19 shiji yanhai shangbu fengguang), 1987. Quoted from the Chinese translation of Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art (Dongxi fang meishu de jiaoliu), Jiangsu Fine Arts Press, 1998, p.364.
[7] Zheng Zhenduo (1898-1958), in his essay ‘The Development of Chinese Painting over the Past Hundred Years’ (Jin bainian lai Zhongguo huihua de fazhan), wrote: ‘The previous stage of China’s history over the past hundred years as a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society can be seen clearly in reportorial paintings (xinwen hua)’. This is a valid assessment.
[8] Shanghai Museum Director Shen Zhiyu writes of the connection between Ren Bonian and Liu Dezhai: ‘He [Ren Bonian] had a friend named Liu Dezhai, who was director of the Drawing and Painting Workshop run by the Catholic Church at Tushanwan in Xujiahui. The two had a close association’. Shen Zhiyu, ‘New historical materials about Ren Bonian’ (Guanyu Ren Bonian de xin shiliao), Wenhui Bao, 7 September 1961, p.4.
[9] Kong Lingwei, Fashion and Trends in Thought: Fashionable Concepts in Chinese Art History in the Late Qing and Early Republic (Fengshang yu sichao: Qingmo-minguochu Zhongguo meishushi de liuxing guannian), Zhongguo Meishu Xueyuan Chubanshe, 2008, p. 22.
[10] Zhu Jianxin, Jinshixue (Epigraphy), Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1981, p.3.
[11] The numbers of people who went abroad to study were 1300 in 1903; 2400 in 1904; 8500 in 1905; and, 13,000 in 1906. The numbers of students at new-style academies in China were 1,013,000 in 1907; 1,284,000 in 1908, and 1,626,000 in 1909.
[12] Li Shutong, ‘Envoi’ (Songbie).
[13] At Zhejiang First Normal School, Li Shutong used human figures for life drawing in the Advanced Teachers’ Applied Visual Arts Class, starting in 1914, which was a year earlier than Liu Haisu. A student during his first year, Wu Mengfei, wrote: ‘When Mr. Li Shutong taught us painting, he first had us draw from life. At first we used plaster models and still objects. In 1914 he switched to live drawing of human figures. The illustration in this article depicts the first time we used a real model to practice drawing from life. …Our class had around twenty students, including Zhou Lingsun (1893-1950), Jin Zifu, Zhu Sudian, Li Hongliang (1894-1971) and Zhu Aisun’. Ref: ‘Fragmentary memories of fine arts education before and after the May Fourth Movement’ (‘Wusi’ yundong qianhou de meishu jiaoyu huiyi pianduan), Fine Arts Research (Meishu yanjiu), 1959:3.
Li Shutong’s teaching method was no doubt influenced by his teacher Kuroda Seiki. In fact, the use of human figures for life drawing in Japan had not been practiced for long before that. In 1893, after Kuroda Seiki returned from Japan, his use of a model in a painting which appeared in the Kyoto Commerce Promotion Expo touched off the scandal surrounding the nude painting ‘Toilette’ (Huazhuang). The nature and impact of this incident was similar to the incident caused by Liu Haisu in Shanghai, but the time interval between them was between 22 and 23 years. In 1898 the Meiji government issued an order banning publication of a magazine which had used a nude painting on its cover, which led to a lawsuit over whether paintings of the human body were injurious to public morality.
[14] Li Tingjing was the founder of the society of painters and calligraphers called Pingyuan Shanfang Shuhua Jihui. A native of Cangzhou, he had the sobriquets Jingshu, Weizhuang, and Ningpu. In 1792, he took up the post of Military Commissioner (Taibing-beidao) of Susong (Shanghai), a position he held for ten years. Source: Haishang Molin (Shanghai’s Traditional Forest of Ink), Shanghai Guji Chubanshe (Shanghai Classics Publishing House), 1989 edition, p. 58.
[15] Gao Yong, ‘Preface’ (Xu), Haishang Molin (Shanghai’s Traditional Forest of Ink), entry on Jiang Baoling: ‘Jiang Baoling...found lodgings in Shanghai during the Daoguang reign. He often convened celebrated scholars at Little Penglai for colloquies on calligraphy and painting. This was thought to be one of the more intriguing events of that period’. Shanghai Guji Chubanshe (Shanghai Classics Publishing House), 1989 edition, p.59.
[16] ‘In 1862 the Duckweed Poetry Society (Pinghua Shi She) changed its name to the Duckweed Painting Society. Previously, Wu Zonglin (styled Qiaosun, soubriquet Guanyun), calligrapher and painter of Qiantang (Hangzhou) in Zhejiang had founded the Duckweed Flower Poetry Society (also called Duckweed Flower Recitation Society) which flourished in Shanghai in the period circa 1840-1851. It was set up at Wenzi Pavilion in the Shanghai County School Headquarters. Its activities were largely writing, reciting, and exchanging poetry; later the activities broadened to calligraphy and painting, and after a time the emphasis shifted to calligraphy and painting. In 1862 its name was changed to the Duckweed Flower Society, and its main activities were held in Dragon Way Hall in the western city’s Guan Gong Temple’. Source: Shanghai Meishu Zhi (Gazetteer of Shanghai Fine Arts), Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe (Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House), 2004.
[17] Yang Yi, Haishang Molin, 1920, juan 3.
[18] Zhang Zuyi (1849-1917) wrote the following inscription on a work by Wu Guandai (1862-1929): ‘since trade was opened at Shanghai, there has been a so-called Shanghai School in the area south of the Yangzi, but their works are vile and not worth looking at’.
[19] The first appearance of the term ‘shanghai School’ (Haipai) may have been in Pacific Pictorial (Taipingyang huabao). At first the term was used in a strongly regional sense to refer to painters in Shanghai, especially those whose style was not restricted to traditional formats.
[20] The other two painters with the given name Xiong were Zhu Xiong and Zhang Xiong.
[21] Kang Youwei, Guang Yi Zhou Shuangyi.
[22] Xugu cites lines from the painter Tang Yin (Tang Bohu) in the set of poems of which this quatrain is part, but Xugu was certainly exaggerating when he said he had completed three thousand works.
[23] The two other painters surnamed Ren were Ren Xiong and Ren Xun.
[24] ‘Three artists called Wu’, according to Qian Huafo, as told to Zheng Yimei. Ref: Sanshi nian lai zhi Shanghai (The Last Thirty Years of Shanghai), Xuezhe Shudian, 1947, p. 55.
[25] Liang Qichao, Qingdai Xueshu Gailun (An Overview of Qing Scholarship), Renmin Chubanshe, 2008.