Chinese Art: Shen Zongqian: Introduction and Part I
Shen Zongqian (1736-1820) was a well-known scholar, calligrapher and painter during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD).
From the book “Biographies of Modern Painters” comes a paragraph about Shen Zongqian. In his youth he traveled in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces with his calligraphy and artwork. Here he enjoyed a high reputation. He settled down at Yanshan Bay of Wuting where he called himself “Old Vegetable-Grower of Yanchi“. Shen lived in a simple house, furnished with wooden couches, paper windows, and lined with stacks of books and drawings. All of this was surrounded by waters and bamboo. It looked like a fitting home for a recluse scholar. His calligraphy was modeled on the Two Wangs, and he painted both landscapes and portraits. His work was highly valued by the artists of his day.
He wrote Qiezhou Xue Hua Pian (1781) in four volumes, upholding the traditions and denouncing the vulgarities of his day. The work is a good guide for artists. His two great masterpieces are: “Spring Morning in the Han Palace” and “A Thousand Bamboos in Mist and Rain”. Shen’s brush-work is both delicate and lustrous of the level of Huang Gengwang and Teng Yuan. In his old age, he painted only with highly concentrated ink.
Notes:
Yanshan Bay: Area of Hangzhou and used as a port for the Silk Road commerce and travel.
The Two Wangs: Father Wang Xizhi (303-361 AD) was known for his full mastery of all of the calligraphy forms. Reportedly, he improved his technique of a turned wrist by watching how geese moved their necks. A pond nearby turned black as Wang used it to wash and refresh his writing brushes. His seventh and youngest son, Wang Xianzhi (344-386 AD) (link) became an equal to his father by his early death. He was famous for his “one-stroke” writing technique. Here he strung together three of four characters, or wrote a complicated character in a single stroke.
Many examples of Shen’s work can be found on the Internet, including the one titled: Living in the Mountains, done in 1786.
5. Force and Life
The underlying nature of the universe can be covered by the words “open” and “close”. From the movements of universal forces down to the movements of respiration, there is nothing which does not involve an opening and a closing movement. This point of view will help the understanding of composition in painting.
Just as there is a period of fresh growth and a period of harvest in a year, so there is a natural composition of beginning and completion in a painting. Besides the annual alternation of the cold and hot seasons, there is the full moon and the new moon in each month, and the alternation of night and day. Applied to painting, each rock and each tree must have its initial and final movement to represent the life movement of creation. Each part derives from somewhere and disappears into somewhere. All this should be clear and orderly in a good painting.
In calligraphy, there is the principle of beginning a vertical line with a horizontal, and beginning a horizontal line with a vertical. Some call this “the crouch before the spring“. The same is true of the opening and closing movements in a painting. For instance, dip before going upwards, turn upwards before turning down. Precede the heavy touch with the light, and the heavy before the light. These are all variations of the open-and-close principle.
6. Grain and Texture
There is one word which may describe the perfect state of mind of the artist at work” “ease”. This English word seems closely related to the Chinese word “xian” (闲). The literal translation means: leisure, idleness and being unoccupied. Ease suggests the easy mastery and absence of difficulties and effort. It is like the patterns of ripples formed by a passing breeze, or the carefree lifting of clouds from a recess in a high mountain. Beauty emerges where the brush touches the paper, and the paper moves in harmony with the beauty of the scene. One moves the other, responds to the other, and the beauty of nature is realized.
The Chinese Theory of Art: by Lin Yutang G.P. Putnam’s Sons New York 1967