Art As Lineage in The Ming and Qing in PDF
Art As Lineage in The Ming and Qing in PDF
Art As Lineage in The Ming and Qing in PDF
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part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
method of recent times. The style (tishi) of his writing had a mus-
cular loveliness, and he formed his own school (zi cheng yijia).2
This is certainly the standard type of passage in which the phrase usually,
and very commonly, appears. Calligrapher or painter A is said to have
studied the work of X, and then looked at the work of Y, and then he
“formed his own school,” or much more literally, “his own family.” This
triangulation of terms looks on occasion startlingly like Hegel’s formula
of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, a way of thinking about things that, along
with the notions of History and progress themselves, are deeply embed-
ded in the discursive practices of the discipline of art history.3
But what does zi cheng yijia signify in the usage of a specific period,
and in particular how much weight should we allow to the use of the
word jia? In Ming and Qing painting sources it is of course seen as a suffix
in the well-known terms lijia and hangjia, denoting respectively the in-
creasingly discursively powerful idea of “amateurs” and “professionals.”
However, the image of zi cheng yijia is arguably one derived not just from
the discourse of painting, but equally as much from the realm of fam-
ily, property, and the practices that link ancestors to both. The image of
“forming your own jia” is at a basic level one of burying your immediate
ancestors — but on your own terms, and perhaps at a site geographically
remote from the “original” location of the patriline. 4 It is thus simulta-
neously an act of acknowledgment of the past (since the phrase is never
used without a listing of the names and sometimes the achievements of
the masters who have been studied) and one of founding, of superces-
sion, of going beyond. It is also a term with long historical roots. Even if
the Peiwen yunfu compilers are right and the phrase zi cheng yijia is rel-
atively late, the idea of yijia is very much older, hovering in meaning be-
tween “one family” and “one expert.”5 At one and the same time a break
with the past and a transmission of its values, the prevalence of the idea
of “forming his own jia” thus embodies a paradox of “rupturing while
continuing,” perhaps analogous to the “paradox of keeping while giv-
ing” familiar to anthropologists from the study of gift-giving by Annette
Weiner and others.6 It points to some distinctive attitudes to creative and
cultural practices that need to be weighed more carefully by art history
than the unreflective “formed his own school,” derived from an analogy
2 Zhang Yushu, Peiwen yunfu, juan 21:922b. On Liu Gongquan’s style, see Harrist, Fong, et al., Em-
bodied Image, 102. 3 Fernie, Art History and Its Methods, 342 – 43. 4 An image I owe to a stimulating
discussion of the subject with Susan Naquin. 5 Li, “Idea of Authority”; Petersen, “Which Books”;
Csikszentmihalyi and Nylan, “Constructing Lineages.” I owe these references, and the image of the
indeterminate meaning of yijia, to very helpful communications from Michael Nylan. 6 Weiner,
Inalienable Possessions.
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clunas art as lineage
[1]
Wang Xizhi (ca. 303 – ca. 361). Ritual to Pray for Good Harvest. Undated Tang dynasty tracing copy,
ca. 618 – 906. Letter mounted as a handscroll; ink on paper, 24.4 × 8.9 cm, entire scroll: 30 × 372 cm.
Princeton University Art Museum, Bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951 (1998 – 140).
461
part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
This text also has an entry for Wen Peng (1498 – 1573), Wen Zhengming’s
eldest son, of whom it says, “In calligraphy, he followed in the footsteps
of Hengshan, particularly exerting himself in ancient clerical script.” It
goes on to mentions a particular specific work of his, Avoiding the Heat
8 Gugong bowuyuan, Mingdai Wumen huihua. Those included are Wen Boren, Wen Peng, Wen
Jia, Wen Congjian, Wen Zhenheng, Wen Shu, and Wen Nan. 9 Wang, Wujun danqing zhi, juan 1:3.
This and the subsequent texts discussed are catalogued in detail in Lovell, Annotated Bibliography.
10 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:28 – 29.
462
clunas art as lineage
[2]
Wen Jia (1501 – 1583). Landscapes, 1575. Two leaves from an album of eight leaves; ink and light
color on paper, each painting 25 × 30.0 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Wen C. Fong,
Class of 1951 and Graduate School Class of 1958, and Constance Tang Fong (y1978–44a, c).
463
part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
[3]
Wen Congjian (1574 – 1648). Conversation, 1618. Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper, 98 ×
47 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Wen C. Fong, Class of 1951 and Graduate School
Class of 1958, and Constance Tang Fong (y1975–34).
464
clunas art as lineage
in the Shade of the Wutong Tree (Tongyin bishu tu), at the time of writ-
ing in the possession of a certain Mr. Gong of Piling, and says of it, “The
composition is rather like that of Hengshan, as he had a deep understand-
ing of the family scholarship (jiaxue), but the coloring is his own.”11 An-
other Wen family painter recorded here is Wen Congjian (1574 – 1648)
(fig. 3), whose entry reads, in part: [3]
It then mentions his now arguably more famous daughter, Wen Shu
(1595 – 1634) (fig. 4), who furthermore has an entry of her own later on [4]
in the text under the category of women artists, where she is described
as “a granddaughter [recte great-great-granddaughter] of Master Heng-
shan, her father was Congjian,” but where no comment seeking to estab-
lish a linkage of her style to any of her male relatives is made.13 The final
Wen family member to be mentioned in the History of Soundless Poetry
is Wen Congchang (1551 – 1616). It reads, in total:
Most of these artists are also mentioned in a slightly later text (after 1677),
the Record of Ming Painting (Ming hua lu) by Xu Qin (active ca. 1677).
Wen Peng is simply identified as the eldest son of Wen Zhengming, with-
out any comment on his style.15 As to the second son, Wen Jia, it puts his
11 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:28. 12 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:29. 13 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi,
juan 5:85. 14 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:29 (complete entry, the last sentence conjectural). The
text says yun reng, and in dictionary terms reng means “seventh generation,” but this is seven gen-
erations from the family founder, Wen Hui (1399 – 1448). Yet the form of his name clearly puts him
in the same generation as Wen Congjian, who was four generations from Wen Zhengming. In fact,
Wen Congchang is well documented as the son of Wen Yuanzhi (ca. 1525 – ca. 1585), son in turn of
Wen Boren. See Wen, Wenshi zupu, juan 1:7b, under “Lishi sheng pei zuzang zhi.” This discrepancy
highlights the gaps between “family” sources and those focused on the discourse of “painting.”
15 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 7:95.
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part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
fame as a poet ahead of his painting, though it praises the latter for at-
taining the excellence of Ni Zan (1301 – 1374), and says that in some ways
he “directly competes with his father.”16 Of Wen Boren, this writer states,
“In the landscapes that he did, the force of the brush is elegant and strong,
and he was able to transmit the family manner (neng chuan jiafa),” and
he concludes that some of his large-scale landscapes “are not inferior
to Hengshan.”17 This text introduces a figure not previously mentioned,
[5] Wen Zhenheng (1585 – 1645) (fig. 5), telling us he was a “great-grandson
of Hengshan,” but making no other family linkages.18
The final text to list a number of Wen family artists that will be ex-
amined here is the Continued Record of an Epitome of the Painting of the
Reigning Dynasty (Guochao huazheng xulu), dating from some point
in the middle of the eighteenth century. This deals collectively with a
group of Wen artists, but begins with Wen Congjian, described as “the
great grandson of the Expectant Official” [i.e., Wen Zhengming], who
“transmitted his family manner with slight changes” (chuan qi jiafa er
shao bian). Then we are given an entry for Wen Congjian’s son Wen Nan
(1596 – 1667) and for Wen Shan (active mid-17th cen.). The former is said
to “be totally endowed with the ancestral manner in painting landscapes”
(hua shanshui yibing zufa), but the description of the latter is not linked
at all to other Wen artists, and nor is that of their kinsman, the equally
shadowy Wen Ding (active mid-17th cen.).19 Finally, there is an entry on
the most distinguished woman artist of the Wen tradition, Wen Shu. Like
a number of other sources in which she is mentioned, the writer links her
to her marital family, the very distinguished Wuxing Zhao, 20 and not to
her natal family, the Wen of Suzhou.21 But in discussing very briefly the
painting of Wen Shu’s own daughter Zhao Zhao (active early 17th cen.),
the author says that “she was equally good at orchids and bamboos, and
no disgrace to the family learning” (jiaxue).22
This term jiaxue, “family learning” or “family scholarship,” seen
employed several times in the discussion of Wen family artists above,
could thus clearly stand in early to mid-Qing usage for a visual as well
as a textual tradition, and indeed it is seen in the sources rather more
16 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 3:40. 17 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 3:40. 18 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 5:61. 19 Zhang
Geng, Guochao huazheng xulu, juan 1:84. The preface of Guochao huazheng lu is dated Qianlong 4
(1739), so Xulu must be later than this. The former, earlier text contains an account of a certain Wen
Dian, “a distant descendant of Hengshan,” and also a descendant of Wen Zhenmeng, whose father
was named Wen Bing. We are told he was impoverished, and sold paintings for a living, but there is
no mention of family style. The point of the entry seems to be an anecdote in which the Kangxi em-
peror asks an unnamed descendant of his about him. Guochao huazheng xulu, juan 1:17 – 18. 20 See
Ankeney Weitz’s essay in this volume for a discussion of the Wuxing Zhao. 21 For example, Feng,
Tuhui baojian xuzuan, juan 3:73; and Tang, Yutai huashi, juan 3:29. 22 Zhang Geng, Guochao huazheng
xulu, juan 2:114.
466
clunas art as lineage
[4]
Wen Shu (1595 – 1634). Carnations and Garden Rock, 1627. Folding fan; ink and color on gold paper,
16.5 × 54.0 cm. The Honolulu Academy of Arts, Gift of Mr. Robert Allerton (1957, 2306.1).
frequently than the cognate “family manner” (jiafa). It may well be the
case that there are relatively few images of the family in elite Ming and
Qing art, in the narrow sense of pictures showing different generations
and genders together like the family portraits of contemporary Europe
(though they are common enough in woodblock-printed illustrations in
books). But any idea that jia had no place in Ming and Qing elite visual
culture is not sustainable; it is simply that it is through “manner” (what
art history would call “style”) and not through iconography that it is im-
aged, and through the idea of jiaxue or jiafa that it is discussed.
The evidence base at the moment may be quite small, and it would be
risky to build too much on it, but it is at the very least intriguing to think
about some of the implications of this, in the light of the work Susan
Mann has done on the notion of “family scholarship” in the long eigh-
teenth century, the precise period when these texts were written. She has
demonstrated the importance of this concept in the Qing social imagi-
nary, as something that both conceptually and actually was transmitted
through a mother; “Before and after marriage, in fact, talented women
formed part of a genealogy of learning (“family learning” or jia xue) that
visibly displayed the erudition of their parents and invoked the honor of
their ancestors.”23 One very famous pictorial rendering of this idea is the
well-known birthday painting done in 1638 for his learned aunt by Chen
Hongshou (1598 – 1652), entitled Lady Xuanwenjun Giving Instruction
in the Classics and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, a work that has
been analyzed as an image of female cultural transmission in dark times
in a study by Anne Burkus-Chasson.24 If, as seems legitimate, the concept
467
part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
[5]
Wen Zhenheng (1585 – 1645). Painting Inspired by Xuanweng’s Poem, 1644. Handscroll; ink and
color on paper, 25.0 × 44.0 cm. Courtesy of Grace Wu Bruce.
468
clunas art as lineage
[6]
Wen Zhengming (1470 – 1559). Flowers, Landscapes, and Poems, 1558. One leaf from an album of
eleven leaves mounted as handscroll; ink on paper, each leaf 30.9 × 52.8 cm. Princeton University
Art Museum, Gift of David L. Elliott (y1975–33).
the further they get from his own day the grander the models he is sup-
posed to have taken (and transcended) for his own art.26 But in this ear-
liest text it seems likely we are being told something particularly impor-
tant about the way contemporaries saw him, and by extension about the
way he may have seen himself, before the full measure of his subsequent
fame was established.
Of the figures named as models by Han Ang, Shen Zhou was known
as Wen’s own tutor in painting, and the linkage between them has been
correspondingly firm and enduring since their own day. With Xia Chang
this is perhaps less true, perhaps partly because Xia is associated both
textually and in surviving objects overwhelmingly with bamboo painting,
which formed only a part of Wen Zhengming’s much admired total oeuvre.
He is a respected name, but not a major figure, in the canon of Ming
painting. The same is even truer, and is admitted as such by the text, of his
elder brother Xia Bing (b. before 1370, active ca. 1403 – 24), who never
theless features as the subject of the very first colophon to be preserved in
the “official” collected works of Wen Zhengming, Futian ji, compiled at
or just after the very end of his life by his son Wen Jia. This reads:
469
part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
27 Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji, 1:517. 28 This is made explicit in the funerary inscription for Wen
Zhengming’s father-in-law, Wu Yu (1443 – 1526), in Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji, 1:699. An egregious
mistake in Clunas, Elegant Debts, 29, erroneously states that Mme Xia was the sister of Xia Chang
and Xia Bing; she was in fact the daughter of the former. For a family tree of the Suzhou Wen, see
Sawada, “Mindai Soshū Bun-shi no inseki.” Wang Yin, the scroll’s owner, was married to another
granddaughter of Xia Chang; he was Wen Zhengming’s brother-in-law, and also associated him-
self with the painting of bamboos. Clunas, Elegant Debts, 28.
470
clunas art as lineage
[7]
Zhu Yunming (1461 – 1527). “Stele for the Filial Daughter Cao E ” and “Prose Poem on the Nymph of
the Luo River,” 1507. Two leaves from an album of thirteen leaves; ink on paper, each 17.1 × 10.6 cm.
Princeton University Art Museum, Bequest of John B. Elliott (1998 – 117)
the very least it seems likely that the Ming sources are much more aware,
and by implication even more open, than we have been regarding the im-
portance of women in this realm of culture, and of marriage as well as in-
heritance as a way in which cultural capital moved about. In an undated
colophon on a work of the calligrapher Zhu Yunming (1461 – 1527), Wen
himself writes, “The praised calligraphers of the previous generation in
my region were Master Xu, Earl of Wugong [Xu Youzhen (1407 – 1472)
and Master Li, Vice-Minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud [Li Ying-
zhen (1431 – 1493)].” He goes on to tell us explicitly that “Zhu Yunming
(fig. 7) was the maternal grandson (waisun) of the Earl of Wugong [i.e., [7]
the son of his daughter], and the son-in-law of the Vice-Minister,” and
that he studied clerical script with his father-in-law while his drafting
script style came from his grandfather; “he combined the beauty of these
two patriarchs (literally “two fathers,” er fu), yet formed his own line (zi
cheng yijia).”29 Here the association of zi cheng yijia, the moment of rup-
ture and founding, with the inheritance from forebears, an inheritance
which in both these cases is made possible only through the women of
the family, is very striking, and gets us closer to the Ming thinking about
these matters than the language of “schools” and “styles” possibly can.
471
part iv the family as site and symbol of artistic production
472
clunas art as lineage
and the greater importance accorded to the “clan” (shizu) of all those
sharing the same surname.35 To understand precisely what he meant
when he used that hoary phrase zi cheng yijia will require us to range
widely and imaginatively beyond what we think we know about the rele-
vant art historical issues, to take in a whole range of other problems that
touch on some of the most complex, most ephemeral, but at the same
time most powerful discourses bearing on the lives of Chinese women
and men in the Ming and Qing periods.
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