Noble Virtues: Nature as Symbol in Chinese Art

Backed by a waterfall and a cliff, stalks of bamboo shake in a violent wind. This powerful image was painted by Yang Han, an obscure artist from Shandong Province who was active during the early Qing dynasty. Images of windswept bamboo were often associated with “loyalist” (yimin) painters—those who refused to serve the non-Chinese rulers of the newly established Qing dynasty. In bamboo, whose flexibility allowed it to bend without breaking, loyalists saw a powerful symbol of quiet resistance.

Inscribed by the artist and by Gu Yuankui (juren degree, 1744); Yinxi (1711–1758); Zhu Wenzhen (1718–ca. 1778); and Cheng Duo (act. early-mid-18th century) Inspired by the viewing of a friend's orchids in full bloom, Zheng Xie painted two plants admired by Chinese literati: the orchid, symbol of loyalty and unappreciated virtue, and the bamboo, symbol of the superior man who is strong yet flexible. Orchids and Bamboo was painted when the artist was fifty, about the time he was appointed to a government post in northern China. Both painting and poem look forward to retirement in the south and celebrate the literati ideal of retreating to nature. The poem, inscribed at the left end of the scroll, is written in a free and elegant style that echoes the brushwork of the orchids beside it.

The artist dedicated his painting and poem to his friend Cheng Duo (act. early-mid-18th century), who, in response, inscribed the painting himself and asked three friends to add inscriptions. At the request of a later owner, Huo Rumu (d. 1921), the renowned calligrapher and painter Wu Changshi (1844–1927) inscribed the title sheet with the characters for "Ink Play" in archaic seal script. At Huo's invitation, another scholar wrote a long poetic appreciation on a separate sheet of paper attached at the left end of the scroll.

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove were a group of men who retreated from society during the turbulent third century to pursue music, engage in pure conversation, and drink wine in the rustic wilds beyond the reach of daily affairs. This vessel, made to hold burning incense, depicts the Sages ensconced amid stalks of bamboo, distanced from the cares of the world.

This dramatically cropped image of bamboo reveals neither the plant's base nor its tip; rather, the leaves and branches seem to defy gravity, giving the pendent bough a sense of dynamic movement and growth. The contrasting ink tones and thrusting brushstrokes that define the leaves add to the vitality of the image.

Ke Jiusi, a leading connoisseur and curator of the imperial art collection, here demonstrates his scholarly approach to the study of antique models by freely copying a work by the Northern Song master Wen Tong (1019–1079), the patriarch of the monochrome bamboo genre.

This brush holder illustrates scenes from the famous poem “Ode to the Pavilion of the Inebriated Old Man” by Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072). Demoted in 1045 to the remote Anhui Province, Ouyang took solace in wine and the natural world. Carving with supreme skill from a massive piece of bamboo, the artist exploited the potential of the different layers of the plant’s flesh to create varied textural and pictorial effects.

Li Kan was a northern Chinese who entered the service of the Mongol government at an early period and rose to a high position in the Yuan court. The author of an authoritative treatise on bamboo painting, Li stated that the painter must possess "the complete bamboo in [his] breast," and he urged statesmen to take up bamboo painting to discipline their minds and expand their breadth of vision.

Li completed these panels in 1318, the year the Mongol regime reinstituted the civil-service examinations, the chief means for scholars to gain access to official positions. The painting is done in the shuangou, or "double-outline," style of bamboo painting. This technique, in which finely drawn ink outlines are filled in with dense mineral pigments, was ideally suited to Li Kan's intense identification with bamboo. Minutely observed and intricately rendered, these noble plants take on a heightened sense of reality that approaches portraiture.

Features such as the gourd held by a standing attendant, the peach blossom clasped by another, and the individual riding on the back of a deer suggest that the figures on this brush holder represent tales of people who visited the mountains, inadvertently entered other realms, and transgressed time, respectively. The two gentlemen playing chess may refer to a story about two individuals who played the game for so long that the eggs they had in their pockets disintegrated.

Bamboo, which bends without breaking, has long been a symbol of integrity and strength. It was also a favorite subject of Ming and Qing scholar-painters. Xia Chang, a native of the Suzhou region, enjoyed a successful official career that led to his appointment as minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices in 1457. He expanded Wang Fu's (1362–1416) style of bamboo painting to become the leading bamboo painter of his time, famous even in Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

Applying calligraphic techniques to painting according to the precepts established by Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), Xia Chang executed his bamboo stalks in the archaic seal-script style and his bamboo twigs in the "grass," or cursive-script, style. Xia Chang's calligraphic mode of bamboo painting was followed by many later Ming and Qing painters.

Shitao, one of the most outstanding landscape masters of his time, was also passionately in love with bamboo painting. On this monumental work, he quotes a description by Su Che (1039–1112) of Wen Tong (1018–1079), the Northern Song bamboo painter: "He dallies amid bamboo in the morning, stays in the company of bamboo in the evening, drinks and eats amid the bamboo, and rests and sleeps in the shade of bamboo; having observed all the different aspects of the bamboo, he then exhausts all the bamboo's many transformations."

Accompanying Shitao's signature is his seal, which quotes a saying by Wen Tong: "How can I live one day without this gentleman!"

During the eighteenth,century, Shitao's style of bamboo painting was practiced by members of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.

The tip of a young bamboo plant leans into view from the left edge of this painting, as if blown there by the wind. Li Shan arranged his lengthy inscription around the leaves, creating a dynamic interplay between word and image. The inscription contains a long poem about the history of bamboo painting from the eleventh century to the artist’s own time. After describing all the great masters who preceded him, he boldly declares that “my own bamboo belongs to yet another school.”

An accomplished poet, collector, painter, and calligrapher and a member of the Song royal family, Zhao Mengjian was compared by his contemporaries to the famous scholar-connoisseur Mi Fu (1052–1107). Like Mi's, Zhao's writing does not derive from a single source but combines the best of many earlier models: the natural charm of the fourth-century Jin writers, the brush method and character structure of the seventh-century Tang masters, and the free expression of the eleventh-century Northern Song calligraphers.

This scroll, which transcribes Zhao's poems on plum and bamboo painting, is his best-known extant calligraphic work. Written for a young relative who was studying painting, the poems stress acute observation of nature and mastery of brush methods and conventions, as well as the importance of personal expression.

A branch of bamboo stretches across this handscroll, its dangling leaves framing a poem inscribed by the artist. The verse reveals that the scene was observed by moonlight after the artist had awoken from a tipsy nap:

The moon sinks low in the fourth watch, paper windows seem empty,
Stirring from a drunken sleep, I prop my head and read awhile,
Lofty thoughts—I force myself, but can’t help it;
Ten stalks, still green in winter, cast profuse shadows.
—Translation after Marc F. Wilson and Kwan S. Wong

This fan purports to be by the Ming dynasty artist Tang Yin (with a spurious date of 1522), but the brushwork of the painting and the calligraphy indicate that it is a copy by an artist of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, it is a fine example of bamboo painting, in which multiple tones of ink have been used to suggest depth among the leaf-laden stalks. The poem describes a spring thunderstorm that stirs bamboo before giving way to a clear, moonlit night:

The crash of spring thunder sets the lush bamboo moving,
Sweeping the ground with its dragon whiskers and long phoenix tails.
Looking up from below the curtain I play my flute,
The bright moon fills the sky, shining on the Xiao and Xiang Rivers.
—Translation by Richard M. Barnhart

Zhu Lu was an impoverished scholar from Suzhou who devoted himself to bamboo painting and poetry. This folding fan combines the two into an elegant composition: a wispy tendril of young bamboo reaches in from the right side, pointing toward the artist’s poem, which reads, in part:

New branches, half newly grown green sheaves;
Jade feeling, how richly shaped and carved!
I linger, come to hidden blue-green colors;
Here all suits my heart, nothing is at odds.
—Translation by Jonathan Chaves

The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove were a group of scholars and writers of the third century who chose spiritual freedom over political engagement during a chaotic era. Although in reality they may not have known one another personally, they are said to have gathered in a bamboo grove near the house of the group’s leader, Ji Kang (ca. 223–ca. 262), to enjoy wine, music, and metaphysical discourse. The surface decoration on these two vessels shows the sages engaged in a variety of scholarly pursuits. The imagery circling the outer wall of the censer creates a sense of continuity that could not be achieved in a painting.

Bamboo painting has remained popular through the twentieth century and into the present day. Wu Huayuan made this fan in 1942, amid World War II, in response to a painting by the Ming dynasty artist Xia Chang.

This wrist rest is an excellent example of bamboo carving by Jin Xiya (1890–1979), the finest bamboo artist active in twentieth-century China. It showcases Jin’s virtuosic command of traditional bamboo carving as well as his creative experimentation. His works incorporate compositions from designs contributed by important modern artists, such as Jin Cheng (1878–1926) on this piece. Jin’s works not only represent the highest achievement of bamboo carving in early twentieth century China, but they also preserve a microcosm of the literati world of that time, when members of the scholarly elite sought to sustain inherited traditions in the face of a rapidly modernizing world.

According to the archival list of Jin’s works (wrist rest #42), the bamboo carving was completed on November 23, 1935.

This wrist rest is an excellent example of bamboo carving by Jin Xiya (1890–1979), the finest bamboo artist active in twentieth-century China. It showcases Jin’s virtuosic command of traditional bamboo carving. His works incorporate compositions from designs contributed by his contemporary artists, such as Araki Jipo (Japanese, 1872–1944) on this piece. Jin’s works not only represent the highest achievement of bamboo carving in early twentieth century China, but they also preserve a microcosm of the literati world of that time, when members of the scholarly elite sought to sustain inherited traditions in the face of a rapidly modernizing world.

According to the archival list of Jin’s works (wrist rest #38), the bamboo carving was completed in the winter of 1929.

Jin Xiya was the most accomplished bamboo carver in modern China. Bamboo’s pliability makes it an ideal surface for reproducing the subtlety of brush and ink via carving, and for this reason the practice was seen as a companion to painting and an elegant pastime for a scholar-artist. This fan and the wrist rests in this case reveal both the expressive potential of the medium and Jin’s unique vision.

Plum blossoms were first depicted as an independent subject by the eleventh-century Chan (Zen, in Japanese) monk Zhongren Huaguang. In this work by the otherwise unknown Buddhist monk Ni Jing, both composition and brushwork derive from the renowned Yuan-dynasty plum painter Wang Mian (d. 1359). The plum, the first flower to appear in spring, is celebrated along with bamboo and pine as one of the Three Friends of Winter. Admired for its purity and hardiness, sending forth new shoots and delicate blossoms from seemingly lifeless branches, the plum became a symbol of survival, rejuvenation, and longevity. Here, the tight clusters of pale blossoms and buds indicate that the plum has just begun to flower. The artist’s poem reads:

Blossoms compete with the moon in luminosity,
One hundred of them merge and make me suspect that
snow has fragrance.
Worldly men vie in boasting fine colors,
Do not call for hand-scooped water to rinse off the pink
adornment.

Zhang You, a native of Fengyang, Anhui Province, who inherited the hereditary rank of marquis (hou), was known for his lofty ambition and scholarly demeanor. An aficionado of ornamental plants and rocks, he made a specialty of painting plum blossoms, studying with the Hangzhou master Wang Qian (active first half of the 15th century). According to his inscription, Zhang painted this work for a regional military commander in Pingjiang (Suzhou), Jiangsu Province.

This ambitious handscroll is the surviving masterpiece of Lu Fu, a specialist in plum-blossom painting who lived and worked in Suzhou during the early sixteenth century. Delicate flowers cascade across a surface more than twenty feet in length, offering an up-close view of a horizontal slice of a plum tree in full bloom. With great precision, the artist reserved unpainted paper for the blossoms against a background of icy blue. The scroll is also a remarkably complete artifact of friendship among elite Suzhou society. Commissioned by a man named Zhang Ling to commemorate an afternoon spent with the famed scholar Shen Zhou (1427–1509), the scroll is inscribed by several of the most celebrated men of sixteenth-century Suzhou, including Shen, Tang Yin (1470–1524), and Wen Zhengming (1470–1559).

The plum, the first flower to bloom in the spring, has long been admired by scholar-gentlemen for its fortitude in the face of harsh conditions. Its delicate blossoms, springing forth from gnarled trunks and twisted branches, are a symbol of renewal, while its fragrance carries connotations of moral purity and loyalty.

Li Fangying developed a specialty for painting the blossoming plum, which he admired for its lofty symbolism and long association with scholar-painting, as well as for its viability as a vehicle for spontaneous, abbreviated brushwork and dramatic abstraction. This album, painted when Li was living at home mourning the death of his parents, exemplifies the artist's integration of poetry, painting, and calligraphy and shows off his distilled minimalism and ability to produce distinctive variations on a single theme.

Born into a family of government officials in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, a district under the jurisdiction of Yangzhou, Li Fangying is traditionally identified as one of the "Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou." In 1729, in recognition of his father's loyal service, Li was granted an official post by the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–35). He held a number of posts as a magistrate in Shandong and Anhui Provinces, but his service was repeatedly interrupted due to clashes with his superiors.

Flamboyantly interpreting the style of Wang Mian (1287–1359), Liu Shiru used bold black strokes to accent the branches and ink wash in the background to highlight the uninked blossoms and snow. In his inscription in the upper-left corner he revels in the vision of "vertical branches collecting three feet of ice."

Flowering through snow and cold, plum blossoms are popular symbols of court beauties and of reclusion; as such, they embody romance, tears, lost loves, and the eternal return of springtime. Xu Jing entitled his painting The Pure Whiteness of Winter, partaking of a tradition of imagery in poetry and painting that goes back one thousand years.

Only after failing in his pursuit of a career as a government official did Li Fangying dedicate himself to painting as a means of survival. For Li and men like him, the plum, which dares to bloom in the cold of late winter, was a symbol of perseverance in a world that did not appreciate their talents. Li’s love of blossoming plum was such that he named his studio the Plum Blossom Tower; it was there, in 1743, that he made this painting. The poem reads, in part:

The mist engulfing the empty mountains hasn’t dissipated at dawn.
In the dim light it reflects upon itself whose talent is appreciated by none other.
Exemplary of the spirit against winter’s bitter cold, it cannot be subdued.
New signs have arrived from heaven.
—Translation by Shi-yee Liu

A poet, collector, and bibliophile, Jin Nong did not take up painting until the age of fifty. Known as one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, Jin specialized in painting plum blossoms. He developed a distinctive style of calligraphy through the study of the squat clerical-script form of ancient stele writing.

Blossoming Prunus was painted for a high official only five years before Jin's death at age seventy-two. In his inscription, Jin speaks of the good fortune of the plum painters Yang Buzhi (1097–1169) and Ding Yetang (active mid-13th century), whose works gained imperial recognition. Jin then adds, jestingly:

"Now I, too, have done a likeness of latticed branches and scattered shadows. How might it also enter the Nine Enclosures [of the Forbidden City] and be submitted to imperial view?"

Plum blossoms have served painters as emblems of regeneration since the Song period. Qi Baishi loved to paint them in several styles, including the bright colors favored by Wu Changshuo. Here however, Qi depicts the plum tree, its upward trunk and hanging branches in calligraphic strokes of somber ink. Trailing down the page like branches are lines of verse in which Qi expresses the sentiment of a great old tree:

Even when its branches droop with age,
It wishes not to be looked down upon.

Jin Nong started painting plum blossoms in 1756 at the age of sixty-nine. This monochrome album was reportedly painted during a six-week stay at Luo Ping's home in Yangzhou in 1757.

Jin Nong's innovative plum paintings are poised between representation and abstraction. The images range from the exuberance of lacy blossom-laden boughs to the restrained elegance of a single budding branch. There is a graphic quality to Jin Nong's compositions, achieved through a tight interlocking of painted image, calligraphy, and seals. His poetic inscriptions, written in his typically exact, vigorous manner, not only deepen the meaning of his imagery, but also act as graphic motifs that further animate each composition.

Drawing upon the association of pine trees with long life, the painter-connoisseur Wu Hufan made this work as a gift for a friend’s eightieth birthday. The pine, though wizened and covered with knots, stands proud as it spreads its branches across the center of the composition. Lingzhi fungus, another symbol of longevity, is paired with rock, an image of constancy, to reinforce the auspicious message. Wu’s large title, written in archaic seal script, reads “Pine Longevity

Because of their association with long life, pine trees were a favored subject for paintings presented on milestone birthdays. Zhang Daqian, one of the most revered modern Chinese painters, made this exceptionally grand example for his friend Zhao Shoujue (1881–1960) on the occasion of the latter’s eightieth birthday. The long inscription recounts the two men’s relationship, which by 1960 had spanned some thirty years.

Tang Di, a native of Wujin (Jiangsu province), was the great-grandson of the renowned scholar-painter Tang Yifen (1778–1853). Though accomplished in painting, calligraphy, and poetry, he prided himself most on his knowledge of physiognomy. In Beijing, where he lived for many years, he was active as a teacher as well as an artist. This work dates to that period of his life.

The painting features a powerfully posturing pine. A moss-covered rock, leaning to the left, offers a counter-thrust to the rightward leaning tree. In Chinese culture, the pine is revered as the gentleman of trees. It remains green regardless of climatic variations. Constant and lofty, it differs from all other beings around it, yet lives in harmony with them.

Pine and rock are paired to create a quiet but sturdy image of constancy and persistence. This painting was created by the celebrated scholar-artist Wen Zhengming and later inscribed by his son Wen Jia with an eleventh-century poem about pine trees. Pines were a common subject for birthday-gift paintings; the elder Wen may have painted this one in advance and never found the occasion to inscribe it for a recipient.

Wu Boli, a Daoist priest at the Shangqing ("Upper Purity") Temple on Dragon Tiger Mountain, Jiangxi Province, was a close folower of Fang Congyi (ca. 1301–ca. 1392). Dragon Pine was painted for Zhang Yuchu, the forty-third Daoist "pope" of the Orthodox Unity sect, and bears his appreciative colophon.

This animated pine recalls an account by the tenth-century hermit-painter Jing Hao that describes "a gigantic pine tree, its aged bark overgrown with lichen, its winged scales seeming to ride in the air. Its stature is like that of a coiling dragon trying to reach the Milky Way." For Jing Hao, as for later artists, the pine signified "the moral character of the virtuous man." Here, the tree may also represent the Daoist sage, or "perfected being." According to Daoist geomantic beliefs, vital energies collect at the base of a mountain slope along the edge of a stream-precisely the location of the pine in Wu Boli's painting.

This pot features four auspicious characters: fortune (fu 福), longevity (shou 壽), peace (ning 寧), and health (kang 康). Rendered in a highly stylized format, the characters are set as a part of vibrant pine trees, bamboo, and plum blossoms. Known as “Three Friends of Winter,” this plant combination symbolizes the lofty virtue of resilience.

With slashing stokes of jet-black ink, Wu Changshuo depicted the “two purities”—pine and plum blossom—as expressive, nearly abstract marks set against the faint gray wash of a garden rock. The ability to withstand the cold of winter imbued both pine and plum with a sense of virtue and steadfastness that was frequently celebrated in premodern Chinese poetry and visual art.

Large pictorial silk tapestries such as these were woven mostly in the imperial workshops in Suzhou, a textile center in southeast China. The background of bright yellow, a color exclusive to the emperor, further confirms the imperial origins. Though usually translated as “phoenix” in English, the fenghuang bird is a distinct mythical species with a different set of associations. The fenghuang, most noble of all feathered species, is said to appear only in times of peace and prosperity, so the creature is depicted frequently in works commissioned by imperial courts.

Large pictorial silk tapestries such as these were woven mostly in the imperial workshops in Suzhou, a textile center in southeast China. The background of bright yellow, a color exclusive to the emperor, further confirms the imperial origins. Though usually translated as “phoenix” in English, the fenghuang bird is a distinct mythical species with a different set of associations. The fenghuang, most noble of all feathered species, is said to appear only in times of peace and prosperity, so the creature is depicted frequently in works commissioned by imperial courts.

Red-crowned cranes, symbols of long life, dance across the surface of this robe. Combined with the auspicious red ground, these birds would have made the garment an excellent choice for a birthday or other celebration.

A favorite image in Chinese society and a familiar presence in imperial gardens as well as refined scholarly retreats, cranes were also renowned as the vehicles of Daoist immortals. Their long life span and loyalty to a single mate made them symbols of longevity and faithfulness. Here, a Manchurian crane, identified by its distinctive red forehead, strolls through a corner of the palace garden. Stopping in midstride and turning its head, the bird has just been startled by a branch of bamboo that has brushed against its tail feathers.

One of only a handful of such large-scale images of birds to survive from the late Yuan or early Ming dynasty, this painting derives its subject from a composition by the emperor Huizong (r. 1100–25), who painted a set of six cranes in different poses. The complex branch structure of the twisting bamboo and the intricate detail of the bird's plumage—with every filament of the feathers carefully delineated—reveal a level of naturalistic description that predates the more conventionalized images of cranes created by the Ming court painter Bian Wenjin (ca. 1354–1428).

The central figure in this bold relief carving is a Daoist deity accompanied by an attendant and several cranes, symbols of longevity.

A married couple sits on a low, backless couch in an elegant and opulent garden setting. Around them is a virtual anthology of auspicious images: the arching pine that frames the image evokes long life; the red-crowned crane longevity and marital fidelity; the bamboo hardiness; the plum blossom new life; and so on. This double portrait was probably commissioned for a special occasion such as a milestone birthday. After the death of the sitters, descendants may have venerated it in the family shrine.

Each of the round medallions on this robe features a red-crowned crane, a symbol of longevity, carrying in its beak a lingzhi fungus, another symbol of long life. These are surrounded by a ring of bottle gourds (good fortune and professional success) and bats (good fortune). Worn on a special occasion, this robe would have virtually glowed with auspicious meaning.

In 1731 the court painter Shen Quan traveled to Nagasaki at the request of the Japanese government. During his nearly two years in Japan, Shen and his students produced a large number of paintings in this style—typified by bold ink brushwork for rocks and trees paired with meticulous application of color for birds and flowers—which served as an enduring inspiration to Japanese artists. This example combines cranes, peaches, and lingzhi fungus, all symbols of longevity or immortality, along with bamboo and China rose (yueji).

Chen Zhaofeng painted for the court at the end of the nineteenth century, during the twilight of China’s imperial period. Although very little of his art survives, this example reveals a high level of technical accomplishment. The crane, pine, and rock are all symbols of longevity, making this painting appropriate to hang in a palace during a celebratory occasion such as an imperial birthday. Chen’s style follows that of the eighteenth-century court painter Shen Quan (1682–after 1762). Originally composed as a set of four hanging scrolls, this painting was remounted in Japan into its current screen format.

Imported from India, the lotus—growing from the slime of a pond, its blossoms blooming unsullied—was linked to Buddhist images of purity and rebirth. By the thirteenth century, naturalistic depictions of lotus in different seasons also evoked the ephemeral nature of physical beauty. This large-scale decorative work is by a professional painter of the Piling School, situated near Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. The midsummer scene (on the right) shows lotus flowers in early stages of budding and bloom, while the autumnal scene (on the left) shows its later stages: petals falling, leaves turning brown, and seed pods ripening. The newly sprouted water reeds of midsummer also contrast with the late-blooming water plant and the smartweed that has gone to seed, while the busy activity of a pair of ducks skimming the water for food on the right is juxtaposed with two egrets resting quietly on the left.

About 1900 the French Sinologist Paul Pelliot acquired a large group of paintings in Beijing that had come from a Qing imperial repository. Included in that group was a partial set of paintings that were created for the Water-Land ritual, a Buddhist mortuary ceremony conducted for the salvation of all the souls of the dead, whether on land or at sea. This painting may have come from the same set.

A cartouche in the upper right corner of the composition identifies the deity portrayed here as Mahasthamaprapta (Dashizhi, in Chinese), a bodhisattva or enlightened being whose name means "one who has attained great power." Seated on a strikingly realistic lion mount and accompanied by a female attendant bearing a pearl, the bodhisattva holds the stem of a lotus with two blossoms that appear above his shoulders, one supporting a pearl, the other a thunderbolt-like implement (vajra). His right hand forms the mudra for charity. Most likely, this painting would have been displayed as part of a triptych together with an image of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin) and a central image of the Amitabha (Miluo) Buddha.

Tang Guang’s name is little recorded in Chinese painting history, but this work reveals that he was a sensitive practitioner of the Piling School manner of flower painting. More than just a decorative work, this painting carries an auspicious new year’s message: in Chinese, “lotus” (lian 蓮) sounds like “year” (nian 年), while “fish” (yu 魚) sounds like “abundance” (yu 餘). Taken together, the meaning is “abundance through the years” (niannian youyu 年年有餘).

This sumptuous painting evokes a rebus, or multipart visual pun, that transforms it from a decorative image into one laden with meaning. The two long-tailed birds (shoudai niao 綬帶鳥) symbolize “double longevity” (shuangshou 雙壽), while the rose (yueji 月季) and crabapple (haitang 海棠) stand for “high hall” (gaotang 高堂), a respectful term for one’s parents. Taken together, the pictures encode a wish of “long life for your parents.”

Seasonal references abound in Chinese art, and the four different scenes featuring flowers and birds painted here allude to the passing of time and changes in nature. For example, tree peonies and pheasants are a harbinger of spring, kingfishers over a lotus pond mark summer, chrysanthemums and hibiscus imply autumn, and magpies on a blooming prunus tree symbolize winter and offer a pun of happiness arriving in Chinese tradition.

This monumental flower-and-bird composition shows the Uighur Bian Lu working in the highly polished tradition of the Song Imperial Painting Academy. Only the calligraphic character of the drawing, particularly noticeable in the rhythmic outlines of the leaves, betrays its fourteenth-century date.

The meticulously detailed plumage of the peacock, the gritty texture of the rock, and the delicately shaded leaves and blossoms are a tour de force of representational illusionism. The bird's pose, dramatically balanced on one leg as it prepares to take another step, may refer to a famous anecdote about the Song emperor Huizong, who chided his court painters for failing to observe that when climbing, the peacock always takes the first step with its left leg.

The plants on this embroidery evoke an auspicious rebus, or multipart visual pun: magnolia (yulan 玉蘭), crabapple (haitang 海棠) and peony (nicknamed fugui 富貴) combine to mean “fortune in the jade hall” (yutang fugui 玉堂富貴), a wish for riches and honor.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

The Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is one of the earliest and finest examples of color printing from China. The book, which served as both luxury object and guide for the aspiring painter, compiles familiar images from Chinese art, especially flowers, rocks, birds, and bamboo.

This colorful jar follows the traditional enameling technique developed during the fifteenth century. Featuring a solid tone, the overglaze enamels are polychromatic but blue appears only in the underglaze, as seen in the outlines around the jar’s neck, shoulder, and base. The dominant use of green, appearing in different hues on rocks, leaves, and the birds’ feathers, is typical of the period. Wares of this type are often identified in the West with the French term famille verte, or “green family.”

The precise date for the vase is found in the poems and seals that are part of the decoration. One of the poems discusses peonies, particularly those on the mythical mountain Penglai, while the other alludes to the strength and brightness of chrysanthemums. The seal, which appears twice, is that of the “residence of wood and stone” (mu shi ju), the name of an independent kiln or studio at Jingdezhen.

Lotuses, a tour de force of "boneless" (color washes with no ink outlines) painting on paper, shows Yun as the most brilliant and subtle colorist of his time. Although the depiction recalls the realism of Song Painting Academy flower paintings, the artist insists in his colophon that he "merely followed the inclination of [his] brushwork in making dots and washes, benefiting from exhilarating accidents and not searching for physical verisimilitude."

The five pairs of birds on this vase stand for the five basic relationships (wulun 五倫) in premodern Chinese society. Phoenixes on perforated rocks near magnolia trees symbolize the relationship between ruler and official. Cranes to the left of them represent father and son. Mandarin ducks swimming by lotuses in the pond signal husband and wife. Two wagtails resting atop the magnolia trees stand for siblings, and orioles in flight evoke friendship.

Beyond the appeal of its sinuous form and elegant blue-and-white decoration, this gourd-shaped vase would have been treasured for the layers of auspicious meaning encoded in its decoration. The image of gourds on vines is a rebus, or visual word puzzle, for “fortune and prosperity through ten thousand generations” (fulu wandai), while the combination of bats and gourds forms a second rebus for “good fortune and wealth” (fulu).

The bats and peaches on this vase celebrate happiness and longevity. The character meaning “double happiness” (shuangxi 囍), which alludes to marital harmony, heightens the auspiciousness of the combined symbols.

In Chinese, the word for “bat” (fu 蝠) sounds like the one for “happiness” (fu 福), so this robe carries a symbolic message of good fortune. The roundels of five interlocking bats surrounding the Chinese character for “longevity” (shou 壽) refer to the “Five Happinesses”: longevity, health, wealth, virtue, and a natural death.

This lavish vase, produced in the imperial kilns of the Qing dynasty, is a virtual compendium of auspicious images, including lotus, dragons, bottle gourds, and more. Particularly prominent are the bats; because “bat” (fu 蝠) sounds like “good fortune” (fu 福) in Chinese, the animals bear this symbolic meaning.

In Chinese, both goats and sheep are called yang 羊, which sounds like the word for “sun” (yang 陽). Three goats together, a motif repeated three times here, thus evokes the phrase “three suns welcome spring” (sanyang kaitai 三陽開泰), a wish for an auspicious new year taken from the ancient Book of Change (Yi Jing).

Lü Ji, a professional painter from Zhejiang Province, worked in the Southern Song (1127–1279) ink-wash style, which had remained popular in that region through the intervening centuries. He was summoned to be a court painter in the Hongzhi period (1488–1505) and was given an honorary title as an officer in the imperial guard. The artist's paintings, done in a dashing descriptive style that was highly regarded at court, were derided by Shen Zhou (1427–1509), the leading scholar-painter of the time, as being merely works "of the hand"; Shen considered his own calligraphic drawings to be products "of the heart." The contrast between the hand and the heart highlights the presumed difference between the works of the "professional" artists and those of the "scholar-amateur" painters of the Ming period.

This portrait depicts a middle-aged man in court robes topped by a sumptuous fur coat. Building on both Chinese and European precedents, the artist shaded the face to suggest three-dimensional volume; the glistening white dot in the eye, suggesting moistness, is a purely European convention adopted by the artist during a time when images from abroad were becoming more widely available in China. The man sits before a screen painted with a floral rebus, or multipart visual pun: magnolia (yulan 玉蘭), crabapple (haitang 海棠), and peony (nicknamed fugui 富貴) combine to mean “fortune in the jade hall” (yutang fugui 玉堂富貴), a wish for riches and honor. With such an auspicious background, this portrait was likely made for a milestone birthday; after the death of the sitter, it could have been repurposed for veneration in the ancestral shrine.

A massive carp leads its eight offspring through thick aquatic grasses below the water’s surface. More than just cute animals, they allude to a line from China’s most ancient poetry collection, the Book of Odes (Shijing). It refers to “nine similitudes” (jiuru 九如)—nine comparisons that imply eternity or longevity (“like mountains,” “like streams,” and so on). Because the term for “similitude” (ru 如) sounds like the term for “fish” (yu 魚), paintings of nine fish became conventional expressions of wishes for longevity and constancy. The painter Gong Gu is otherwise unknown, but the splashy brushwork and broad washes suggest a date from the mid- to late nineteenth century.

Wang Wu painted this fan using the “boneless manner” (mogu fa), in which blocks of color are used to define shapes without ink outlines.

Xu Lin was a scholar-artist whose diverse talents ranged from painting to playwriting to calligraphy. This fan preserves his transcription of an ode to the beauty of rain-laden laurel flowers by the poet Chen Yuyi (1091–1138).

Yun Shouping painted this work in the “boneless manner,” in which blocks of color are applied without ink outlines. In this case, the entire painting is without ink; the lines for leaf and petal veins are rendered in deeper shades of the surrounding colors.

Xu Zonghao’s gnarled branch of blossoming plum consists of gray ink wash, bold black dots, and unbounded daubs of green—an assemblage so freely painted that it is nearly abstract. The poem describes a late winter scene, the subtle fragrance of plum suffusing early dawn when the moon still hangs high in the sky.

The artist called this painting The Five Nobilities, a play on the fact that the word for “sparrow” (que 雀) sounds like the word for “noble rank” (jue 爵). According to the artist’s inscription, he copied the composition after a painting attributed to the Song dynasty emperor Huizong (1082–1135).

Zhu Cheng painted in Shanghai in the waning years of the Qing dynasty. At a time when China’s position on the world stage had been weakened, images of birds of prey became more popular. Artists and patrons looked to inject a sense of strength into the ink-painting tradition through these symbols of martial power. The hawk stands stolidly on a wizened old pine as flowering plum—a sign of spring renewal—blossoms below.

Qi's inscription seems to question the bitter civil strife and foreign aggression in China in the thirties:

Why attack ordinary birds,
Spraying blood and feathers on the ground?

Borrowing lines from Du Fu.
[Trans. Ellsworth et al, Later Chinese Painting]

The great eagle is inspired by the 17th century individualist Badashanren. Qi relies less on individually inflected brush line than his model and more on strong design. Qi's genius in the use of positive and negative space and the meeting and parting of forms is evident both in the painting and in the beautifully carved seal that follows his inscription. Qi used a distinctive straight cutting style in his seal carving, seldom turning the knife. the resulting strong, rough line shares the aesthetic of calligraphic scripts carved in stone and clay. In this painting, the hand of the artist is as sure in creating the angularity and bold force of the pine branches as in the supple, evenly modulated strokes of the needles.

During the early 1980s Wu Zuoren produced a number of heroic images of eagles—a symbol of Confucian loyalty and imperial majesty—that would have been suitable as presentation pieces. This noble bird, perched on a pinnacle overlooking distant mountains, is accompanied by a monumental seal-script title that evokes associations of both patriotism and longevity.
Wu used diluted ink dots to describe the birds' plumage. In this technique, each feather is defined by a single brush stroke in which the dark ink seeps to the outside perimeter of every dot.

Gao Yong was a prominent member of the group of Shanghai artists in the closing decades of the dynasty and the early Republican period that included the elderly Ren Yi, Wu Changshi and Luo Hui, all represented in this exhibition. Gao's contemporary vision uses the iconoclastic ink play of the early Qing monk painters Badashanren (Zhu Da, 1626–1705) and Shitao (Dao Zhi, 1642–1707). Gao confounds rational space in a strong interplay of surface and depth, solid and void. There is humor in the bird's awkward balance as it tends to its parasites. Strong blunt brushwork emphatically defines an implausible landscape.

Xie has annotated this tracing with comments regarding the colors used in the original model.

Flowering wisteria vines were a favorite subject of Wu Changshuo, who reveled in painting the wildly tangled vines and cascading bundles of blossoms. Wu was a leading figure of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Shanghai School of painting, which built on historical precedents to fashion a bold manner of bright colors and saturated applications of ink and pigment.

Chen Hengke's knowledge of the modern period, gained during his studies in Japan between 1902 and 1909, gave him a distance from his own tradition. Yet he was able, from this vantage, to reaffirm his belief in the enduring vitality of Chinese calligraphy and painting. An influential historian of the literati tradition and a leader among painters and calligraphers in Beijing, Chen died before he reached fifty, but the many artists who were his friends and students, among them Qi Baishi (1863–1957), advanced his ideals.

Chen's approach to landscape painting demonstrates the shift in the modern period away from pictorial to graphic principles. While working with traditional media and subject matter, Chen employed an assertive brushwork that is virtually independent of the painting's representational function.

Chen Hengke was an influential historian of the literati tradition and a leader among painters and calligraphers in Beijing. He died before he reached fifty, but the many artists who were his friends and students, among them Qi Baishi (1864–1957), advanced his ideals.

This painting of a tree and a rock that Chen saw while on a walk is more a product of his imagination than of direct observation, which explains why, according to his inscription, one viewer thought the tree resembled a dragon:

There is this strange sight in the Central Park [in Beijing], but tens of thousands of tourists have passed it by, unnoticed. So I decided to paint it. A Buddhist-monk friend of mine asks, "What does it mean when a dead tree looks like a chanting dragon?" I have no answer.

(Wen Fong, trans., Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001], p. 148)

Chen Banding painted this amusing coup de theatre, according to his inscription, well into a long night of celebrating the birthday of Meilan Fang, a renowned Peking Opera star.

Chen Banding studied with the prominent Shanghai-based painter Wu Changshuo, whose loose, sketchy manner of flower painting built upon seventeenth- and eighteenth-century precedents). This striking plum suggests the manner of Jin Nong (1687–1763), a favorite of Chen’s.

Qi Baishi's early mentor in Beijing, Chen Hengke (1876–1923), counseled him to abandon his technical training and strive for a new expressive freedom through a calligraphic approach to painting. The subsequent transformation of Qi's style is illustrated by this painting. Each crustacean—like a single Chinese character—is formed through the repetition of the same conventionalized pattern of marks. Released from the need to visualize each shrimp separately, Qi thus was free to explore the abstract expressive possibilities of structure, ink tone, and composition and to achieve the direct, childlike spontaneity and naturalness that are hallmarks of his work. Qi's exhilaration at the possibilities offered by this method are reflected in his inscription:

If you can forget painting theory, you will not suffer from its deeply rooted bad effects. Then your brush will fly like the heavenly horse moving through the sky.

(Robert H. Ellsworth et al., trans., Later Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 1800-1950, 3 vols. [New York: Random House, 1987], vol. 1, p. 157)

Crabs became an important subject in Qi Baishi's painting after he moved into a new studio in 1913 and crabs frequented his backyard. He once observed, "When a crab moves, its legs rise and fall in strict order despite their great number. This is something crab painters in the world do not know." This work represents his mature style, when naturalism and abstraction found a new balance. The subtle gradation of the ink suggests the undulation of the shell's surface. The eyes have become two short slanting lines. The claws, as circular splotches of ink with two simple converging lines, are reduced to geometric abstraction. During the last forty years of his life Qi lived in Beijing and befriended people of radically different persuasions. His passive tolerance of things of which he might not approve shows in his sarcastic inscription to this painting, which reads: "I just fold my arms and watch you gentlemen go." The Chinese term for the sideways movement of crabs, hengxing, is also a metaphor for impudent behavior. Qi often humorously compared crabs to presumptuous people. Here, he states that he will simply stand aside and let these creatures have their way.

Qi Baishi often painted fish, crabs, and shrimp in the early years of his Beijing period (ca. 1920–57), but he seldom painted frogs. As a professional artist, he had to cater to the popular demand for sets of four hanging scrolls, so frogs became his fourth aquatic animal. The frogs in this painting face one another as if engaged in conversation in front of the calamus plant, which is indigenous to their watery habitat. Qi inscribed it with a couplet:

By the Starry Pond [Xingdou Tang] were three houses,
Where sons and grandsons knew the calamus flowers.
(trans. by Shi-yee Liu)

After moving to Beijing, Qi often drew inspiration from memories of his hometown in Hunan. The "Starry Pond" mentioned above refers to his birthplace. The Ming Loyalist Bada Shanren (Zhu Da,1626–1705) had a major influence on Qi Baishi's art. In this painting, the simple, expressive brushwork, strong compositional design, and the frogs' animated expressions are clearly indebted to Bada's psychologically evocative imagery. But Qi infused these traits with his typical warmth and humor. There is also a practical reason for his transformation of Bada's edgy style: his early Bada-inspired paintings were not well received in Beijing, so he tempered the austerity of Bada's influence with an exuberance and cheerfulness derived from the popular manner of Wu Changshuo (1844–1927).

The Nandina, called Southern Heavenly Bamboo (Nantianzhu) in Chinese, has a range of auspicious meanings. Its profusion of red berries symbolizes abundance, while the similarity of the words for “bamboo” (zhu 竹) and “wish” (zhu 祝) makes the image of the plant suitable for use in a range of rebuses, or multipart visual puns.

Zhang Daqian's mother taught him to paint flowers when he was a child. At the age of nineteen he left his native Sichuan Province and went to Kyoto to study textile weaving and dyeing. When he returned to China in 1919, he lived in Shanghai and Suzhou, where he immersed himself in the study of traditional painting. Between 1940 and 1943 he studied, catalogued, and made copies of the brilliantly colored wall paintings of the Buddhist cave temples, mostly fifth to tenth century, in the western oasis of Dunhuang.

This painting epitomizes Zhang's ability to synthesize diverse stylistic sources. The bold ink-wash lotus leaves reveal his early fascination with the expressive style of Bada Shanren (1626–1705); the descriptive treatment of the blossoms and water plants reflects his mastery of academic bird-and-flower painting; the vivid palette and ink washes suffused with blurry highlights of red and green reveal his familiarity with the Japanese artists of the Nihonga school. Zhang's inscription suggests that he was inspired by the visions of paradise at Dunhuang. Stylistically, however, this image has nothing to do with early models; instead, its sumptuous style comes closest to the decorative imagery of modern Japanese flower paintings:

Blue, yellow, red, and white express [Buddha's] infinite benevolence.I offer these lotuses as Buddha's manifestation of joyfulness.

(Wen Fong, trans., Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001], p. 201)

Throughout his career, Zhang Daqian explored different ways of depicting lotus. Here, he has extended the expressive potential of bravura ink-play pioneered by Xu Wei (1521–1593) and Zhu Da (1626–1705) by adding representational details to abstract patterns of color wash to create an evocative, atmospheric image. He dedicated this work to Lin Yutang with a poetic inscription that reads:

Thanks to the silk-washers who did not pluck them,
They remain in the rain to shelter the mandarin ducks.
(trans. by Shi-yee Liu)

This image is executed in what Zhang referred to as his "splashed-ink" style, which he developed in the mid- 1960s. While this style strongly suggests inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, Zhang never entirely abandoned figuration. He interpreted his formal eclecticism by invoking Laozi: "Laozi said, 'Procure the essence, and transcend the phenomena.' This state is hard to attain. Images barely emerge out of an elusive haze-that's close enough." This lotus, which reveals itself through a grayish-blue nebula of saturated color, embodies Zhang's ambitious integration of East and West as well as past and present.

In his later years, Zhang Daqian experienced vision loss. In response, he leaned into his interest in abstraction to create images driven by bold shapes, color fields, and the unerring strength of his hand rather than painstaking attention to detail. In this painting, made just three years before his death, Zhang’s leaves have become large, unruly daubs of ink and color. The power of his brush remains evident in the towering stems and in the flowers themselves, where he has strategically chosen to apply areas of detail to contrast with the boldness of the leaves.

Shi Lu used heavily saturated pools of diluted ink and color to evoke the languor of a summer afternoon by the banks of a lotus pond. The inscription written in his signature angular hand reads, “The summer rain and fresh lotus are cool refreshments relieving the summer heat.”