Brushwork Behavior from Song to Qing
joan stanle y- baker
Brushwork evolution in Chinese painting1 parallels structural and stylistic transformation. In this essay I intend to demonstrate that as a research tool brushwork behavior provides reliable indications of a painting’s production period. Much as Western tools like structural analysis and morphology can tell us the date of a painting,
brushwork behavior, once understood in its steady evolution through the past millennium, is an even more sensitive gauge for dating a work. Ancient paintings can
be trace-­copied to reproduce accurately the original structure and morphology, but
brushwork behavior is overlooked by the copyist, who usually leaves traces of his own
time in his brushwork behavior using, as he would, the silks, papers, and brushes of
his own day. It is the interrelationship of painting surface, brush hairs, and ink wash
that determines the wrist movements or brushwork behavior. As structure changes,
especially in Ming painting, a concomitant change occurs in brushwork behavior. By
behavior is meant not only the direction in which the brush moves (that is, its formal aspects), but the differences in the intensity with which the brush contacts the
painting surface, the speed of the draw, and the weight we sense in the artist’s wrist.
Morphologically, brushwork undergoes the gradual schematization, simplification,
This paper is dedicated to Wen Fong, whose pre-1967 seminars at Princeton were models of painstaking research in
which students were asked first, before looking at signatures
or labels, “Where does this work fit? Why do you think so?”
In his efforts to outline the development of Chinese landscape painting, Professor Fong aimed, by means of structural analysis, to pinpoint the sequencing of period styles
down to the quarter century. In the ensuing four decades
this teaching has remained a major component of my tripartite methodological arsenal: structural and morphological
analysis, traditional literati modes of reading relative quality
in brushwork, and meticulous attention to the nature and
date of retouching. I have continually tested its validity in
the context of painting as well as in calligraphy, being ever
ready to give it up if proven unworkable, as many colleagues
in Chinese art history seem to believe and have abandoned
analyses of period features in favor of social, c­ ommercial,
and political considerations, even gender discourse. For
me the original tool kit has remained valid, and thorough
a priori visual analysis of the work itself has remained a
reliable tool for dating, where I have added consideration
of brushwork behavior that, as it changes over time, has
proven a remarkably reliable yardstick for dating in the
context of Chinese brush arts.
I have learned much from my graduate students, who
have borne the burden of the preliminary grouping and
­analysis of works discussed in this paper. I also thank my
undergraduate students for assistance and endless searches
for photo sources and publication dates. The draft of this
paper was read by James Cahill and Paul Taylor of the
Warburg Institute, both of whom gave invaluable critiques
from their respective perspectives.
1 I have introduced the analysis of brushwork behavior
in my studies on Wu Zhen (Stanley-Baker 1995) and Wang
Meng (Stanley-Baker 1990), and more recently in a study
published on the Internet that categorizes the many features
of eighteenth-century court painting that influenced not
only literati painting but also informed the splendid forgeries of the time in ancient names (http://art.tnnua.edu
.tw/joan/index.htm; see especially the section entitled “Art
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part five : learning from nature
figure 1 Ma Lin (ca. 1180–after 1256). Spring Fragrance, Clearing after Rain.
Detail. Album leaf, ink and color on silk, 27.5 × 41.6 cm.
National Palace Museum, Taipei
and ­multiplication of a favored brush mode (cunfa). When an earlier brush mode or
stroke-type is repeated, it is transformed both contextually and morphologically, and
thus never appears the same as before.2
Here, we shall follow the evolution of the oblique “ax” stroke ( fupi cun), a type
of modeling stroke executed in “small” or “large” form that is associated today with
the Southern Song painters Li Tang (ca. 1070s–ca. 1150s), Ma Yuan (active ca. 1190–
1225), and Xia Gui (active ca. 1195–1230). While this stroke was not the only brush
mode used in the Southern Song, its reinvented form three to four centuries later was
envisioned from the mid Ming dynasty on as the standard modeling stroke for the MaHistory Without Names”). The present study offers broader
observations, examining the rise and decline of brushwork in modeling over several centuries. Brushwork, as
manifested in brush-tip hairs and shapes, types of paper,
and methods of producing brush, paper, and ink, reveals
its period of production as unmistakably as a blood type,
regardless of the work’s thematic appearances, provided
we learn how to read the evidence. The closest identifier
is the brushwork’s touch (bichu), the inimitable aspect of
wielding the brush, which is as uniquely personal as dna. It
is the touch that provides the most telling clues to the work’s
expression. My most recent published discourse on brushwork behavior focuses on Shen Zhou’s calligraphy (StanleyBaker 2006), and over the past several years I have given
over twenty public lectures showing this mode of examination in the dating of works ascribed to various masters at
the ­Diancang-Artco space in Taipei. These lectures will in
future be published as individual booklets (in Chinese).
2 The paintings reproduced in the present study necessarily
include some untested works, which may not be as precisely
dated as hoped. But under the circumstances, until they
have been subjected to testing and dating, these works still
serve as terminus post quem. For a discussion of different
temporal, structural, and stylistic distances from original,
prime objects, see Stanley-Baker 1986. For an in-depth
attempt to identify firsthand the originals or prime objects
of an artist, and the (provisional) dating of later additions
or accretions, see Stanley-Baker 1995. The dating of nonprime works must remain provisional until we have uncovered the prime objects of masters of each third to quarter
century up to the present. Until then, the examples used for
“later” styles are either of the period suggested or even later
(pending investigation), and provide only a terminus post
quem. For instance, in my study of Wu Zhen, I dated the two
fishermen handscrolls to the time of Shen Zhou’s Tiger Hill
album in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, then thought to be of
the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century (Stanley-Baker
1995), but research on Shen Zhou in subsequent years (the
results of which are not yet published) indicates that the
noisy ambience and swift brush-wielding of the Shen Zhou
album and the Wu Zhen handscrolls belong to the early
seventeenth century, a hundred years later.
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stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 2 En-I (active late 13th century). Illustrated Biography of the
Prelate Ippen (1239–1289), 1299. Detail, scene of Nachi Waterfall. Handscroll,
ink and color on paper, 37.8 × 802 cm. Tokyo National Museum
Xia school. Students, collectors, and imitators still regard it as confirmation not only
of a school style but also of the Southern Song period. But the large, obtrusive oblique
ax stroke per se did not, I believe, acquire its “standard form” until the Ming dynasty,
during the Hongzhi era (1488–1505). As a form type, it became popular and stereotyped during the mid- to late fifteenth century, when “posthumous contributions” by
latter Ming painters to Southern Song artists appeared, not only in the names of Li
Tang, Ma Yuan, Ma Lin (ca. 1180–after 1256), and Xia Gui, but even of the early Ming
master Dai Jin (ca. 1388–1462). During the Hongzhi reign, when the Imperial Academy was on the wane,3 such paintings seem to have been in considerable demand.
The earliest surviving firsthand, or authentic, example of the small ax stroke (xiao
fupi cun) is found in an early to mid-thirteenth-century album leaf by Ma Lin, the
breathtaking Spring Fragrance, Clearing after Rain, in the National Palace Museum,
Taipei (fig. 1). To my knowledge, the earliest reliable example of the large ax stroke
(da fupi cun), obliquely applied with a flaring brush tip exposing the glaring “white”
3 For the most lucid exegeses on the Ming Academy, see
the outstanding studies by Hou-mei Sung, who has assiduously pored through Ming documentary material and
adjusted our understanding of the workings of this tortured
institution. Her recent publication, The Unknown World of
the Ming Court Painters: The Ming Academy, is published in
both Chinese and English editions (Sung 2006). According
to Sung, by the Jiajing period the Academy was already in
decline. This explains the appearance during the late Jiajing
and throughout the Wanli period of many interesting works
bearing names of literati artists, including, among others,
Shen Zhou’s teachers, Liu Jue and Du Qiong, as well as Dai
Jin. That is, replacing the court as major patron was the
burgeoning collection demand of private collectors from
Li Kaixian (1502–1568), Han Ang (early 16th century), and
He Liangjun (1506–1573) to collectors like Wang Shizhen
(1526–1590), Wang Zhideng (1535–1612), Kang Bofu (early
16th century), Zhan Jingfeng (1537–1600), the generational
collector family of Zhang Chou (1577–1643), and diarist Li
Rihua (1565–1635) whose collection accounts become ever
more verbose, leaving us with ever more information on
what (they thought) they saw and treasured. Even if the
emperors provided no huge demand for early and recent
paintings, the popular market did, and was amply supplied,
as we see in surviving collections and collection records of
the time.
655
fig 1
part five : learning from nature
fig 2
painting surface beneath, is a handscroll by the Japanese painter En-I (active late 13th
century), Illustrated Biography of the Prelate Ippen, dated firmly to 1299, in the Tokyo
National Museum (fig. 2). These two works are important indicators of the evolution of Chinese ax-type brushwork through the thirteenth century. Whether small on
foreground stones or large on mountain surfaces, the ax strokes in these early paintings function to depict the texture of large cliff surfaces or tall craggy rocks, not, as
in paintings of the late fifteenth-century Ming and later, as a “school badge” nor as a
“big ax” form.
In Ma Lin’s Spring Fragrance we see riverside rocks looming dimly in the soft mist.
Enlargements show that the ax strokes are obliquely pressed on and into the silk in
a slow, heavy motion. The command of atmospheric space, a hallmark of the Southern Song, leads the viewer gradually from the moist foreground, where the ­riverbank
grasses have been bent by recent rains, through increasingly dense mist to the oppo­site
shore and beyond. When we look at the detail of En-I’s scroll depicting the Nachi waterfall, from the end of the century, we see mountains pierced by hollow crevices, not
brushstrokes applied at an angle. Each of the large strokes describes a separate rockface hollow, an indentation, or a slippery surface gouged into the cliff face. Throughout the thirteenth century, the behavior of these descriptive ax strokes is in keeping
with “physiographic” principles4 of early Chinese painting of the Song and Yuan. But
major changes will occur in the early Ming, as we shall see below in a quick view of
the oblique stroke as it evolves from the late fourteenth to the late sixteenth century.
standardization and dissolution
of the big ax stroke in the ming
fig 5
fig 4
The beginning of the standardization of the big ax stroke may predate the mid-Ming
court painter Wang E (ca. 1462–after 1541), whose brushwork already shows a development that has moved beyond standardization toward a self-identifying trademark.
Broad parallel bands of oblique strokes are applied downward in dark ink, while thin
parallel strokes are wiped onto smaller rock faces to describe fissures (fig. 5). The use
of large broad strokes for foreground rocks in paintings ascribed to the Song, as we
know them in modern collections, seems to go full tilt in the first half of the fifteenth
century, during the Yongle (1403–24), Xuande (1426–35), and Zhengtong (1436–49)
eras, and then wanes during the second half of the century.
In the famous handscroll Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden by Xie Huan (late
1360s–after 1452), in the Zhenjiang Municipal Museum (fig. 4), rocks are depicted
with both large squarish ax strokes and fine spikelike downward strokes. In this stage
of early fifteenth-century painting, modeling strokes were still applied at irregular
intervals and angles and for descriptive purposes only, as in the Southern Song and
Yuan. After the mid-fifteenth century, the ax stroke as a major technique seems to
have waxed strong. We find reflections of this in Japan in paintings by Sesshū Tōyō
4 See Stanley-Baker 1995.
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stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 3 Wang Lü (born ca. 1332). Climbing Mount Hua, 1382. Detail.
Album leaf, ink and color on paper, 34.7 × 50.6 cm. Shanghai Museum
figure 4 Xie Huan (ca. late 1360s–after 1452). Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden. Detail.
Handscroll, ink and color on silk, 37.5 × 401 cm. Zhenjiang Municipal Museum
(1420–1506). After his return from China in 1469, Sesshū began to use the then new
mode of large, four-square blocks (applied at an angle in the center of the rock, and in
a more vertical alignment to the left; fig. 12), in tandem with the thinner long straight
strokes he seemed to prefer, a type of stroke that had been used by painters under the
Ashikaga shoguns, including the monk Tenshō Shūbun (active 1423–died ca. 1463) as
well as members of the Ami school.
There is a distinct evolution from the spontaneously applied, almost formless
squarish oblique daubs that function as descriptive devices in works both by Wang
Lü (1332–after 1383; fig. 3) and by Xie Huan (fig. 4), court painter during the Yongle,
Xuande, and Jingtai (1450–56) reigns,5 toward a more “standardized,” repeated shape
that is more schematic and less descriptive. That is, until the mid-fifteenth century
the ax stroke had appeared in “free form” shapes, and served a descriptive function.
In Xie Huan’s depiction of the Taihu rock, we can hardly see the brushwork, so convincingly is it embedded into the silk as stony gouges and indentations.
5 For information about the promotions and vicissitudes of court painters during the Ming dynasty, see Sung 2006.
657
fig 12
fig 3
fig 4
part five : learning from nature
figure 5 Wang E (ca. 1462–after 1541). Watching the Waterfall.
Detail. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 190 × 106 cm.
Anhui Provincial Museum
figure 6 Attributed to Li Tang (ca. 1070s–ca. 1150s). Winter Landscape,
mid- to late 15th century. Hanging scroll, one of a pair of landscapes,
ink on paper, 98.2 × 43.6 cm. Kōtōin, Daitokuji, Kyoto
fig 5
fig 7
fig 8
fig 6
By the latter part of the fifteenth century, Wang E, who served as a court painter
under the Hongzhi and Zhengde (r. 1506–21) emperors, displayed a powerful flourish
of strokes that became the trademark of the Zhe school and were also self-­expressive
in their bold assertiveness (fig. 5). In the Hongzhi period we see a more personal, expressive mode of painting. The Hongzhi emperor appreciated painters like Wu Wei
(1459–1508), whose brushwork appears to have been applied not with a tamed and
dutiful writing brush but as if rubbed on with a broom, with his wild but organic energy always perfectly within the limits of legibility. Many such “wild” brush artists,
including Wang Shichang (1462–after 1531; fig. 7), found favor under the Hongzhi
­emperor, continuing into the Zhengde reign (1506–21) and beyond. After the apogee
of the ax stroke in the sixteenth century, the vigor in surface modeling begins to decline in the latter half of the Wanli period (1573–1620), in the early seventeenth century, and the ax strokes deteriorate into long straight lines that are now applied in
profusion in the manner of the literati pima cun hemp-fiber strokes, even with some
overlapping as in the example by Shen Shuo (active 1573–1620; fig. 8). Seen from
this evolutionary standpoint, it would seem that it was in the late fifteenth century,
when the broad and thin oblique standard ax strokes learned by Sesshū were about
to give way to the new, more flamboyant spirit of Wu Wei and Wang Shichang, that
both the Li Tang landscape in the Kōtōin, Kyoto (fig. 6), and the long handscroll now
ascribed to Xia Gui, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig. 13), discussed below,
were produced.
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stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 7 figure 8 Wang Shichang (1462–after 1531). Landscape, early 16th century.
Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 206.3 × 114.5 cm.
Yale University Art Gallery, Anonymous loan
Shen Shuo (active 1573–1620). Watching the Waterfall with the Qin,
early 17th century. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk,
165.5 × 88.6 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
As illustrated in Figures 3–8, the oblique modeling strokes show decided changes
from the late fourteenth to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in shape,
in intensity of application, and in function, revealing a clear and gradual evolution of
brushwork behavior in its development, full flowering, and dissolution into decline.
From the Ming to the early Qing, evolutionary changes are evident in all aspects of
brushwork application. Here, we examine the ax stroke to highlight this evolution.
Changes in this stroke-type occur not only in shape or form but also in behavior. From
the late fourteenth through the fifteenth century, the large ax stroke functions to suggest facets and hollows in the rock face. Evidence of this is found in both Chinese and
Japanese painting of the period.
Fifteen years into the Ming dynasty, Wang Lü, in his album of 1382 recording his
travels to Mount Hua (fig. 3), radically compacts the illusion of space of the previous Yuan era to create a dramatic reduction in the sense of physical distance from
the viewer. Wang’s rocks, however, are still modeled in the traditional descriptive
­thirteenth-century manner directly linked to that of the Southern Song and Yuan, as
seen, for example, in Ma Lin’s Spring Fragrance, Clearing after Rain (fig. 1). The function of Wang Lü’s daubing is to show rock facets, potholes, and cragginess. The wider,
oblique strokes are applied as short blobs in a spontaneous and descriptive manner,
while marks of different shapes and ink tonalities are planted into the paper in varied
degrees of wetness and intensity amid different grades of ink wash to describe crevices and dark areas. The intention, continuing uninterrupted from the Southern Song
659
fig 3
fig 1
part five : learning from nature
fig 6
fig 15
fig 10
and Yuan, is to re-create a particular aspect of the physical condition that the artist
had experienced during the time he spent at the mountain site. The ­notable change
or differences in brushwork from the previous era are found in the speed and weight
of the brush as it moves across the painting surface. The Ming paper on which Wang’s
painting is executed has less sizing than Song and Yuan papers, so the movement of
the brush across the surface must increase in speed and the weight of the wrist decrease. We shall follow this gradual change in penetration and weight as we move
­toward the latter half of the Ming.
In the early fifteenth century, beginning with Dai Jin, who was born in the early
Ming but whose paintings (like those of the younger Shen Zhou [1427–1509]) still
echo aspects of Yuan painting, the oblique stroke begins to make its first move ­toward
self-­consciousness as a specific, predefined stroke-form, though not yet applied in any
set pattern. In the most conservative examples, Dai Jin’s oblique brushwork behaves
more as a recognizable stroke-type than the daubs of Xie Huan, but it is only an odd
ax stroke applied here and there, mixed in among many other types of strokes, slashes,
and dots. In Dai’s authentic, original firsthand works, the brushwork is still relatively
spontaneous and irregularly shaped and applied, its function still primarily, though
not exclusively, descriptive.
By the Chenghua (1465–87) and Hongzhi periods, we find many anonymous
works that seem pressed to produce a “Southern Song Academy” look. As we enter
the Hong­zhi period, the large oblique ax stroke emerges as the de rigueur modeling
stroke for both foreground and background rocks, as seen in the Kōtōin pair of landscape scrolls ascribed to Li Tang (fig. 6),6 and in what is probably an early sixteenth-­
century screen now ascribed to Tenshō Shūbun,7 two works at an equivalent phase in
their respective evolution of the big ax stroke. For the Hongzhi–Zhengde period, we
may also refer to tested authentic works of Shen Zhou (fig. 15) and Tang Yin (1470–
1524; fig. 10), as well as to samples from woodblock prints in dated publications of the
Ming and Qing dynasties respectively. Woodblock images may not appeal to the aficionado, but they show clearly the relative shape and function of the brushstrokes and
their relationship to each other and to the contour lines. Whether executed by painters of the so-called Zhe school or Wu school, modeling strokes of both types—the
hemp-fiber stroke of the literati Wu school or the ax strokes of the Zhe school—become during the mid-Ming more formally pronounced as evocations of ancient hallmark brush modes. This seems to be a characteristic of the Hongzhi–Zhengde period,
and should constitute a criterion for assessing period style.8 Artists working in any
given period may differ widely in style, as evidenced by the Zhe and Wu schools, but
we must identify the features of commonality for each phase in their respective evo6 James Cahill already in his 1980 Index queried the
date of this pair of landscapes and the Li Tang signature
that had been discovered on a tree trunk. He writes,
“The ‘signature,’ however, is oddly placed and probably
spurious. The paintings are post-Hsia Kuei” (Cahill 1980,
123).
7 Four Seasons Landscape, Muromachi Period, late 15th–
early 16th century, double six-fold screen, ink and color
on paper, 150 × 355.4 cm; Important Cultural Property
a11970, Tokyo National Museum.
8 To my knowledge, no colleague has done research using
similar principles. Working with limited resources, I cannot
yet be entirely certain of each specific increment in the
evolution sequence proposed in this paper. I hope only
to indicate a directional path in this evolution, and shall
continue testing it in the future.
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stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
lution through the three centuries of the Ming dynasty. These include structural principles as well as brushwork behavior (not brushwork type or shape).
It would seem that it was during the Hongzhi era, in the mid- to late fifteenth century, when brushstrokes per se, without a descriptive function, began to be appreciated and expected. The deployment of brush modes becomes a more conscious act. At
this point the big ax stroke comes to the fore as the standard type for academic painting, with a distinctive foursquare or oblong shape produced in a downward stroke
with the brush tip pointed to the left. The modeling stroke becomes more obtrusive,
mannerized, and stereotyped, applied de rigueur as a declaration of school allegiance,
whether by Shen Zhou, who spent his life producing variations on Yuan literati brush
themes, or by Academy professionals such as Wang E.
In the early sixteenth century, during the Jiajing era (1522­–66), the obtrusive big
ax stroke begins to assume an increasingly expressive mien, freeing its shape from
the oblong oblique downward stroke to swish across the painting surface, moving in
any direction, in varying widths, offering an exciting, vibrant timbre to Zhe school
painting. This can be considered the apogee of the ax stroke. A century later, by the
Wanli and Chongzhen (1628–44) eras, the ax stroke goes into marked decline: broad
swashes are reduced to thinner lines, eventually to slivers, and become so schematized that painters, it would seem, no longer understood the origins or function of
this brush idiom called the ax stroke. Modeled in this way with slivers of straight lines
(imitating the then far more prestigious and popular curved hemp-fiber strokes or
pima cun, made with a centered brush), mountain flanks now lose their volumetric
value and, in their usually heavy outlines, become flattened and stacked like playing
cards in the hand, each fish-scale-like flank filled with obligatory (school-­identifying)
strokes, as we shall see below (figs. 18–23).
Except for the late fourteenth-century Wang Lü album and the early fifteenthcentury Xie Huan handscroll, there is not a single stroke in the group of paintings illustrated in Figures 3–8 that behaves like the slow, deliberate, and heavy push-andpull of the brush in intimate and intense interaction with the painting surface that
typifies authentic Song and Yuan examples of all schools. Most attributions we have
today to the Southern Song and the Ma or Xia school seem to have been produced
during the Hongzhi–Zhengde reigns, with brushstrokes like those in the Wang E example (fig. 5).9
dating two attributions to ma lin by brushwork behavior
Before turning expressive in the latter part of the sixteenth century, the big ax stroke
was formulated and then mannerized and regimented, assuming the standardized form best known to us today as Southern Song, especially as Ma-Xia markers.
It is ­applied serially as two to three parallel swipes without descriptive function, a
9 Many famous attributions to Ma Yuan, like Dancing and
Singing on the Mountain Path and the beautiful Plums Rocks and
Wild Ducks, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, as well as Twin
Herons on the Snow Bank, in the National Palace Museum,
Taipei, date from this “standardization” phase of the Hongzhi–
Zhengde reigns, in the late fifteenth–early sixteenth century.
661
fig 5
part five : learning from nature
figure 9 Ma Lin (ca. 1180–after 1256). Spring Fragrance, Clearing after Rain.
Album leaf, ink and color on silk, 27.5 × 41.6 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
fig 10
fig 11
fig 9
fig 14
d­ evelopment that took place in the late fifteenth to the early sixteenth ­century, in the
Hongzhi and Zhengde reigns. For the development leading up to this standardization
we may look at the late fifteenth- to early sixteenth-century brushwork behavior in
Tang Yin’s Whispering Pines along the Mountain Path (fig. 10). Following Shen Zhou,
Tang’s brushwork is more categorized, with certain strokes clearly assigned for certain motifs. The strokes are here expressive and personal, not yet mannerized to the
degree, or with the lightness of wrist, seen in the painting Listening to Winds in the
Pines, ascribed to Ma Lin (fig. 11).
Next to the firsthand work from Ma Lin painted in the first few decades of the
thirteenth century (fig. 9), the two other works with trees in wind illustrated here
(figs. 10, 11) reveal a basically different attitude to painting along a distinct evolutionary axis. The commonality in their brushwork behavior is seen not only in structure and morphology, but in the increasing lightness of ink and thinness of ink wash,
and in the growing standardization of earth and rock strokes, whether centered or
rounded (fig. 10), oblique or square (fig. 11). In both later works, the smooth, continuous lines that mark the pine bark on the trees seem to flow, if not glide, over the
silk. Energy in the Southern Song painting on the left is directed inward, into the silk,
whereas in the two later Ming works it is dispersed laterally along the painting surface. We can sense the flight of the brush tip as it skates along in light, joyful sweeps.
Looking at the form of the strokes, we see radically different principles at work that
distinguish Song and post-Ming works.
In the Ming period, there is an evolutionary process transforming brushwork behavior, reflected in the sequence or relative stages of maturation in schematization
that indicate the sequence in production time. Modeling strokes in Tang Yin’s Whispering Pines are still creative, as we also see in Huang Gongwang’s (1269–1354) Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (fig. 14). Tang Yin, like his teacher Shen Zhou, has not yet
treated the favored hemp-fiber stroke as a party badge that is applied ubiquitously. He
is still applying modeling strokes as needed for descriptive purposes, even though at
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stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 10 Tang Yin (1470–1524). Whispering Pines along the Mountain Path, ca. 1500. Detail.
Hanging scroll, ink on silk, 194.5 × 102.8 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
figure 11 Attributed to Ma Lin (ca. 1180–after 1256). Listening to Winds in the Pines, after 1600.
Detail. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 226.6 × 110.3 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
the same time he delights in doing pirouettes on silk with his fully charged and selfassured brush. The Ma Lin attribution (fig. 11), on the other hand, shows a state of
mannerization far more advanced than the equivalent strokes in the Tang Yin painting. Clearly, professional and amateur painters were keenly aware of each other’s developments. A closer comparison of Figures 10 and 11 shows the brushwork of the
latter to be faster and more stereotypical, as if made-to-order according to given prescriptions.10
Next to the Ming works, the Southern Song example (fig. 9) shows no set formula
for either rock or tree bark. Oblique strokes of different sizes, shapes, and ink tonalities are daubed onto—as if pressed into—the silk and applied, as all other types
of modeling strokes, dots, and washes, only as needed and only for descriptive purposes. The irregular dots and short strokes of the tree bark show a similar spontaneity in application; each is different, but all are applied slowly and, when compared to
the two Ming examples, with considerable weight. More importantly, the ink wash is
laid down in multiple layers, creating a palpable atmospheric perspective and physical presence.
10 There are other indications that suggest a date for the
Ma Lin attribution beyond the seventeenth century. These
include the pine bark, which in the Ming is usually depicted
as ink circles and now has dissolved into languid flowing
lines without undulation, and the circular white “lining”
accompanying the garment fold lines, a favored practice of
the Qing court. The precise dating of this work is still under
study. Suffice it to say that it comes much after the Tang
Yin painting illustrated in Figure 10 and is not in any way
related to the authentic Ma Lin work in Figure 9.
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fig 11
fig 9
part five : learning from nature
fig 9
fig 10
fig 11
In contrast, the two post-Ming paintings display a different pictorial principle reflected in the greater speed and lesser weight of the brushwork. The details illustrated
show mannerization in progress, both in the square ax and round hemp-fiber strokes
in the rocks and earth and in the circular stroke used for the pine bark. Typifying the
early sixteenth century, the circular strokes in the Tang Yin painting done in about
1500 (and certainly before Tang’s death in 1523; fig. 10), when seen next to Ma Lin’s
painting of the thirteenth century (fig. 9), are drawn without too much thought, and
in the painting done closer to 1700 (fig. 11), they have dissolved into thin, wisplike
lines, languidly swiped on in thin spirals or parallels, with a ­notably lighter touch and
lesser weight than Tang Yin’s modeling brushwork—moving over the silk, no longer
into it. On the rock face, the “Southern Song Academy logo” of par­allel triangular ax
strokes are applied with such speed that their weak stroke ­endings “fly white” with
the brush tip only half-charged with dry ink and the wrist pressure shriveling up midstroke. Aside from areas with brushwork, the rest of the surface in post-1600 painting
is reduced to “void” or “left over” silk or paper. This is in op­position to Song, Yuan, and
early Ming painting, where every inch of the painting surface is experienced as space,
and represented as such. Song and Yuan artists apply multiple and varied layers of ink
wash to the entire painting surface, whereas late Ming and Qing painters, like calligraphers, “write ideas” (xieyi ) to express their familiarity with brush modes of ancient
masters or reproduce calligraphic works literally from ancient copybooks. In this context, it is only brushwork that matters. The notable speeding up in the wrist that affects
the brushwork in paintings done in the late Hongzhi to early Zhengde eras and the relative lightness in brush weight that results are both reflected in the Tang Yin work. By
the time of the Ma Lin attribution, probably around the end of the seventeenth century, the process of mannerization had been long complete.
It is in the early seventeenth century, in the mid-Wanli period, I believe, that the
Academy begins to lose its productivity and vitality. As increasingly wealthy ­collectors
created markets for famed Southern Song and early Ming Academy works, the ­already
standardized big ax strokes that up to that time had been seen usually on foreground
rocks begin gradually to lose vitality. They now become longer, thinner, split into parallel bands and, by the late seventeenth century, splinter into slivers.11
dating the long scroll attributed
to xia gui by brushwork behavior
fig 12
In Japanese reflections of the ax stroke evolution, the formation of parallel stroke series on the slant acquired its mannered look only by the late fifteenth century, after
Sesshū Tōyō’s visit to China in 1467–69, a time when Shen Zhou was just reaching
maturity in performing the brush modes of Yuan masters that by his day were deemed
“classical.”12 Sesshū’s famous Long Handscroll of 1486, in the Mori Museum (fig. 12),
11 Space constraints prohibit a detailed discussion of this
interesting development.
12 The concept of brush modes, the behavior of which
parallels the unchanging structural principles through the
Southern Song and Yuan and contradicts the “Yuan Revolution” hypothesis, is introduced in Stanley-Baker 1977.
664
stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 12 Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506). Four Seasons Long Handscroll, 1486. Detail. Handscroll,
ink on paper, 39.7 × 1,586 cm. Mori Museum, Yamaguchi Prefecture
figure 13 Attributed to Xia Gui (active ca. 1195–1230). Clear and Distant Views of Mountains
and Streams, late 15th century. Detail. Handscroll, ink on paper,
46.6 × 889.1 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
displays brushwork behavior that is at the very same phase of evolution as that in the
anonymous long handscroll ascribed to Xia Gui in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig. 13). In contrast to the brushwork behavior of the thirteenth century (as in
the Ma Lin album leaf; figs. 1, 9), these two works exhibit notable speed and lightness
of the brush, thinness of the ink-wash layers, and relative mannerization of motifs.
The trees are no longer distinguished from one another, but form “clumps” or groups
by dint of many horizontal strokes interspersed with some vertical strokes. The process of mannerization is more advanced in the Xia Gui attribution, where the trees
are even less distinguishable, the random dots more numerous and less purposeful.
In short, we see that the handscroll attributed to Xia Gui is either contemporaneous with the 1486 scroll by Sesshū or, more likely, somewhat later. This is evidenced
by the relative maturation of the abbreviation process in the brushstrokes used for
the distant tree clumps. In Sesshū’s painting, the horizontal strokes describe separate trees in discrete groups; in the painting attributed to Xia Gui, the far more profuse horizontal strokes begin to merge and the more numerous vertical tree trunks
no longer bear discreet leaf groupings. Later, in seventeenth-century works (figs. 17,
21–23), the tendency to fuse and confuse horizontal tree branch strokes becomes even
more pronounced.13
13 Abbreviation of leaf-strokes and merging of tree trunks
seem to go full tilt in the seventeenth century in brushwork
of all schools. Subsequently we see a dramatic about-face,
where logical recession, diminution, and pellucid place-
ment of all elements along the ground plane define painting
of the eighteenth century, when European painters are fully
present at the court.
665
fig 13
fig 1
fig 9
fig 17
fig 21–23
part five : learning from nature
fig 11
Both artists were probably copying from versions still extant in the late fifteenthcentury Chenghua and Hongzhi academies, versions based on still older models. Both
faithfully reproduced the well-known passage of a tree-topped bluff towering over the
water. Models of favorite images may well have been available to painters outside the
Academy, even among visiting foreign clerics, especially since many Academy artists had lost their jobs under the Hongzhi emperor.14 That even in this passage the
two scrolls differ in details, such as the pagoda, indicates the existence of different
sources, and/or deliberate variations on the same source (the present two samples
would support the former hypothesis). But significant in the context of this paper is
not so much the comparable compositional details as the virtually identical brushwork behavior. Simplification and codification of what was then considered ancient
language (or a legacy of the Southern Song) are seen in both paintings. The Japanese
penchant for transparency and clarity eschews heavy ink-wash overlays, but the lack
of a specific representational function of the strokes and the flying (non-­adhering)
dots, the speed of the draw, the shallowness of the wash, if and when applied, all point
to the late fifteenth century for the Xia Gui attribution.
It may have been in the first half of the sixteenth century, during the Hongzhi
and Zhengde reigns, that collectors first evinced a huge demand for (re)productions
of Southern Song Academy paintings; by the Jiajing and Wanli reigns demands arose
also for works by celebrated early Ming painters like Dai Jin and Wu Wei. Looking
at extant works in Dai’s name, for example, we see that they either resemble Yuan
compositions in structure, with descriptive brushwork much like that of masters
of the fourteenth century, or, on the other hand, (the forgeries) resemble paintings
of the late sixteenth century in brush behavior like that of followers of Wen Zhengming (1470–1559).15 Well into the early seventeenth century, Southern Song and
early Ming Academy attributions continue to be produced, surviving in large numbers. This is evident not only in their late Wanli-period structure with its typical
high-rising ground plane,16 but also in the brushwork, which now becomes increasingly stylized, mannered, and removed from its descriptive function of the Song and
Yuan periods.
Visual evidence suggests that in the early Ming, professional painters as well as
the literati continued the Yuan practice of physiographic representation17 for a generation or so, and had not standardized their respective modeling strokes, whether
the big ax stroke or any other squiggly or mottled literati or professional brush mode.
Neither did Dai Jin nor, even fifty years later, Shen Zhou, Wu Wei, or Tang Yin schematize their strokes for hard shiny rock surfaces or regiment their hemp-fiber strokes
to the degree seen in Listening to Winds in the Pines ascribed to Ma Lin (fig. 11) and in
the countless attributions to Wang Meng (ca. 1308–1385) fabricated after Wen Zheng14 See Sung 2006, 31ff.
15 The finer details of evolution in brushwork behavior between 1559 and 1700 remain to be more closely investigated.
16 The continuous rise of the ground plane virtually
reaching the top edge of the painting surface is seen especially in late followers of the Wen School like Song Xu
(1525–after 1605) and Zhang Hong (1577–after 1652).
17 I use “physiographic” to describe painting of the Song
and Yuan, and “ideographic” painting of the Ming and Qing.
See Stanley-Baker 1995. Physiographic painting invokes a
full sensory experience of a time-place with all attendant
incidents and frissons.
666
stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
ming’s death, along with a profusion of forged Wen Zhengming works, throughout
the seventeenth century.
In Listening to Winds in the Pines, there is a manifest breeziness and freedom in
the brushwork and a mannerization of brush modes from two generations earlier in
undated paintings like Whispering Pines along the Mountain Path (fig. 10) or Clearing
Snows in the Hanguan Pass,18 both probably originals by Tang Yin painted in the early
sixteenth century, before his death in 1523. It was in the succeeding century, from the
mid- to late sixteenth century in the Jiajing and early Wanli periods, that the broad or
elongated triangular oblique and splayed ax strokes applied in parallel and in ­series
became standardized as signifiers for Southern Song Academy brushwork. As far as I
can see, this had not yet happened in the fifteenth century when early Ming painting
was only just beginning to evolve from the Southern Song and Yuan feeling for space
as well as from its varied and spontaneous but descriptive and penetrating brushwork
behavior.
The analysis of brushwork behavior as an investigative tool may be added to Wen
Fong’s classic Western methodological tools of structural and morphological ­analyses.
In Chinese painting, when the structure itself is transferred directly by tracing or
close copying, we may easily err in relying on structure and morphology alone. But
brushwork behavior, as demonstrated here, seems to be date-sensitive, regardless of
school affiliation. As seen below, it is a decisive factor in dating contested versions of
Huang Gongwang’s famous landscape handscroll Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains,
which, with its easygoing, unassuming hemp-fiber texture strokes, is a legendary hallmark of the untrammeled literati spirit, and possibly the most celebrated Southern
school19 work of all times.
dating the ziming version of
huang gongwang’s fuchun scroll
When we examine several copies of an artwork together, we observe the relative
manneriza­tion of brushwork, the density (or number) of nonfunctional but “typical”
­lineage-indicators, and the speed of the draw, all of which, experience has shown,
increase with time. The above proves true when we line up corresponding sections
of the Wuyong and Ziming versions of Huang Gongwang’s handscroll Dwelling in
the Fuchun Mountains, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, the two versions that
have caused many legendary authenticity-disputes.20 These two scrolls have previously been studied mostly on the basis of collection seals and encomia, authentication criteria that in the end are no more than external regalia or circumstantial factors extraneous to the work—badges that can be snipped off and reattached, and that
never touch upon the psycho-physiological traits, such as brushwork speed, weight,
18 Clearing Snows in the Hanguan Pass, hanging scroll,
ink and light color on silk, 69.9 × 37.3 cm; National Palace
Museum, Taipei.
19 For compilations of discussions on the Southern school
and literati traditions, see Wenren hua yu Nanbei zong lunwen
huibian 1989; Dong Qichang yanjiu wenji 1998.
20 The two versions are identified by the names of the
recipients inscribed in the dedication section in each of the
respective scrolls.
667
fig 10
part five : learning from nature
figure 14 Huang Gongwang (1269–1354). Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains. Wuyong version,
1347–50. Detail. Handscroll, ink on paper, 33 × 639.9 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
figure 15 Shen Zhou (1427–1509). Remembering Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains,
1487. Detail. Handscroll, ink and color on paper, 36.8 × 855 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing
fig 14
fig 15
fig 16
fig 17
fig 9
or the touch of the living person actually breathing and wielding his brush to create the painting. Here let us line up the Wuyong version (fig. 14) with correspond­
ing sections from Shen Zhou’s copy of 1487 in the Palace Museum, Beijing (fig. 15),
and Wang Hui’s (1632–1717) copy of 1673 in the Freer Gallery of Art (fig. 16) and observe the evolution of brushwork behavior, the progress of schematization and multi­
plication. Viewed side by side, these three works, along with the fourth, the Ziming
version (fig. 17), immediately reveal their interrelationship, especially through brushwork behavior. We see that the Wuyong version has the least amount of brushwork,
and the most spontaneous deployment of modeling strokes and motifs, while the
Wang Hui version reaches a schematic density, with the most profuse and most mannered arrangement of brushwork where the intense profusion of brushstrokes (fig. 16,
distant trees at the left) forms scalloped patterns that are in turn offset against echoing white clouds in scallop formation that together provide a new abstract dynamism,
ushering in the baroque in Chinese landscape painting.
Both in attitude and in deployment (albeit not in shape), the brushwork in the
Wuyong version is functionally not far removed from that in Ma Lin’s Spring Fragrance (fig. 9) of the previous century: it is description-activated, generated by a
descriptive need; thus it is sparse, and applied in a leisurely, easygoing manner.21
Soft earthen rock forms and modeling strokes are built up in the carefree way of an
21 In contrast to a spontaneous and creative work such as
the Wuyong version, we may observe the works hurriedly
produced in antique factories of the late seventeenth to the
early eighteenth century, such as the Ink Bamboo Manual
bearing the name of the Yuan master Wu Zhen (1280–
1354) and a completion date of 1350, in the National Palace
Museum, Taipei. This so-called album is a pastiche assembled from album leaves and snipped from handscrolls, a
production of different and indifferent hands. The carelessness with which the work is put together testifies to the
existence of deadlines in the trade, at least by that time. The
Kangxi and Yongzheng courts evidently invited a host of
posthumous contributions to fill the imperial art coffer, and
the Qianlong emperor solicited works in the names of Tang,
Song, Yuan, and Ming masters with a seemingly insatiable
appetite. The fashioning of imperial taste during the Qing
period is a vital research topic, as it underpins our major
collections today, beginning with the imperial collections,
as reflected in the Shiqu baoji catalogues detailing those
collections.
668
stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 16 Wang Hui (1632–1717). Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains after Huang Gongwang, 1672.
Detail. Handscroll, ink and color on paper, 38.4 × 743 cm. Freer Gallery of Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (f1950.19)
figure 17 Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.
Ziming version, dated to 1338 (probably early to mid-17th century). Detail.
Handscroll, ink on paper, 32.9 × 589.2 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
i­ mprovisation, spontaneously daubed here and there as the painting progresses. The
hemp-fiber texture strokes are shorter than in the other three, more organic works,
where humps are “woven” into the foreground to describe the softness of the earthen
hillocks, with the strokes becoming sparser and longer in the upper part where they
describe mountain folds. Following Yuan recessional perspective, the trees diminish in size as they recede up the picture plane and into the distance. The brushwork
is energetic, as if bounding with life in the squiggling of darker trees at mid-ground.
Nearly 140 years later, in his personal version of this scroll painted from memory in
1487, Shen Zhou does not create a landscape, but re-produces a painting. However,
he takes liberties without seriously detracting from the intended Huang Gongwang
flavor, injecting his favorite idioms from Wu Zhen (1280–1354), in the vertical dots,
and Ni Zan (1301–1374), in the horizontal dots, and adding his own favored colors,
creating an intimate connection between himself and his favored Yuan masters. In
this manner of “art historical” practice, Shen reveals his understanding of history and
the preferences of his own time. He has schematized the fir trees as “Huang Gongwang Fu­chun trees,” deploying them as he would typical modeling strokes, now of
equal size and clarity, and distributing them at regular intervals throughout, while
notably increasing their number. The brushstrokes are now standardized as “Huang
Gongwang Fuchun hemp-fiber strokes” and are applied without variation. The display of Huang-isms in “brush flavor,” not in diminution of recession, is the point
here. Of all four versions illustrated here, the Shen Zhou version, structurally of
his time, stands out for the compressed space between foreground and background
with much reduced intervening space, creating, in comparison with the other three,
that sense of breathlessness typical of the Hongzhi era. The Yuan and the Qing preferred greater views of and consistency in the ground plane, in marked contrast to the
mid- and late Ming, which favored reduced intervening space between foreground
669
part five : learning from nature
fig 16
fig 17
and background. And it is the similarity in the consistent ground plane of the Yuan
and early Qing that has confused our perception of the fourteenth and seventeenth
centuries. However, if examined for brushwork behavior (structural similarities notwithstanding), the two periods are easily distinguished, as they come at the beginning and the end, respectively, of the rise and decline of brush modes in brushwork
behavior.
Wang Hui’s somewhat creative copy of Huang Gongwang’s Fuchun scroll (fig. 16),
done in 1673, shows structurally the return to the spatial expansion and clarity of the
Yuan, space that is typical also of the late seventeenth century. However, at the same
time, Kangxi era brushwork shows a stage of mannerization far more advanced than
the Hongzhi period two centuries earlier, in the late fifteenth century. Wang’s brushwork is highly regimented; the modeling strokes and the trees are now very much
standardized and densely applied, filling the space with a rhythm of their own where
trees and white clouds form meandering bands decorating the space, creating an abstract pattern. Groups of dots, trees, or clouds are deployed along invisible wavelike
contours, forming a rhythm that would usher in the baroque phase of Qing art.22 Like
Shen Zhou, Wang Hui is not so much copying as he is re-creating the Fuchun scroll
in his own voice. His modeling strokes have multiplied in number far beyond those
of Shen Zhou’s time and are now grouped into dynamic small units that charge the
work with a zing and excitement undreamt of in the fourteenth century, or throughout the Ming. Brushstrokes now do not have, nor do they need, descriptive purpose.
The artistic intent here, like that of Shen Zhou but even more intensified with time,
is to pay homage to Huang Gongwang–like brushwork. Wang’s copy is especially interesting in its structure, which reveals intentions of the Qing to obey once again the
laws of perspective prevalent in the Yuan. Sharply “improved” perspectival diminution begins in the Wanli era, in the late Ming, and becomes a typical feature of early
and mid-Qing painting throughout the eighteenth century.
The Ziming version (fig. 17), unlike the Shen Zhou and Wang Hui versions, is
a more closely observed copy of the Wuyong version. Here, however, diminution
is used to dramatic effect, clearly unlike the more naturalistic and, one might say,
laissez-­faire attitude of the Yuan period (Wuyong version). In the Ziming version,
perspective strongly enhances the viewer’s sense of increasing distances from the
­vantage point. Like both the Shen and Wang copies, and unlike the Wuyong version,
the emphasis is on brushwork display. Brushstrokes have lost their individuality, their
variation, and their descriptive purpose, and they have multiplied in number, as in
the Shen and Wang versions. But the Ziming hand is not yet familiar with its new
­deployment for the supra-formal baroque effects that Wang Hui would so brilliantly
exploit. Note how the alum lumps ( fantou) to the left of the main slope are now passively aligned in a row. This formal grouping of elements began in the Wanli era and
built up momentum until Wang Hui, who, born into it, became the driving force that
ignited Chinese painting with this baroque feature.
22 See “Art History Without Names” (see note 1).
670
stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 18 Wang Yan (active 1573–1620). Pavilions and Figures,
late 16th–17th century. Detail. Screen, carved lacquer
figure 19 Attributed to Dong Yuan (active 930s–960s). Mountain Hall in Dongtian,
early to mid-17th century. Detail. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk,
183.2 × 121.2 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
Observing the evolution in Ming brushwork behavior in both academic and literati painting from the mid-fourteenth to the late seventeenth–early eighteenth
­century, we see clearly that the Ziming version of Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in
the Fuchun Mountains belongs to a period after Shen Zhou but before Wang Hui,
and cannot be anywhere near the Wuyong original of the mid-fourteenth century. I
would posit a production date of around the 1630s, after Dong Qichang’s revival of ancient idioms and before Wang Hui’s making of them into abstract cadences described
above (where black trees and white clouds bond together and undulate across the
­painting surface with an abstract value of their own; fig. 16). In brushwork ­behavior
the Ziming and Wuyong scrolls are centuries apart. Lining them up in the sequence
presented here clearly confirms the hypothesis that there is a discernible increase in
the deployment of stereotyped “traditional” brushstrokes over time, with conceived
“standard” types applied de rigueur, even by top-notch artists like Shen Zhou and
Wang Hui.
fig 16
brushwork behavior at the end of the ming
Another example of the use of brushwork behavior as a dating tool in Chinese paintings is provided by an examination of two very late works bearing early attributions:
Mountain Hall in Dongtian (fig. 19), ascribed to the tenth-century master Dong Yuan
(active 930s–960s), and Soughing Pines in Myriad Valleys (fig. 23), attributed to Li Tang,
both in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The late production date is ­revealed
both in their post-Wanli structure and especially in the respective evolutionary stages
of their brushwork behavior.
671
fig 19
fig 23
part five : learning from nature
fig 18
fig 19
fig 23
fig 20
fig 21
Looking briefly at structure, the Dong Yuan attribution reveals a state of evolution
comparable in date to the late sixteenth-century Wen school of the three generations
between the younger Wens, Wen Jia (1501–1583), Wen Boren (1502–1575), and Song
Xu (1525–after 1605), followed by Zhang Hong (1577–after 1652).23 The late sixteenthto seventeenth-century lacquer screen by Wang Yan (active 1573–1620; fig. 18) provides a mirror image of the Dong Yuan attribution (fig. 19). The brushwork of the
painting is notably repetitious and meaningless in terms of either school affiliation or
description of texture, as happens in brushwork behavior of the late sixteenth to the
early seventeenth century. Mountain folds are treated with the same rows of repetitious brushstrokes, in this case horizontal Mi-dots, or variations thereof, juxtaposed
with languid verticals that describe nothing, and thick, decorative rounded clouds interspersed in bands. The Li Tang attribution (fig. 23) is composed in the very same
manner as the landscape ascribed to Gu Zhengyi (active 1575–1597; fig. 20), but with
the telltale rising ground plane typical of the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth
­century.24 In brushwork behavior, it is identical to the Dong Yuan attribution, where
numerous meaningless horizontals interact with nondescript vertical strokes. The art
of modeling surface texture, or topography, with particular stroke-types has clearly
long vanished. These three works—the lacquer screen and the paintings attributed
to Dong Yuan and Gu Zhengyi (figs. 18–20)—belong, I believe, to the first half of the
seventeenth century. Two of the next three paintings in this group (figs. 21–23) more
probably date to the latter part of the seventeenth century. The tendencies seen in
the early part of the seventeenth century, including application of outlines in dark
ink and the proliferation of interior strokes (which behave as long lines without vigor
or function, no longer modeling terrain or suggesting rock surface texture), are intensified in these works, even though structurally the ground plane is now lower and
distant mountains appear to descend from the clouds and touch the earth’s ground
plane.25
Each of these three works depicts trees sprouting out of rocky mountain tops. The
woodblock print (fig. 21) is from a gazetteer on Jinling (Nanjing) monasteries as they
23 In attributions to these artists, the ground plane rises
steadily toward the top of the picture surface and recedes
in echelons, where vertical and ground planes fuse into a
single plane. James Cahill first introduced the Wen school
followers Song Xu and Zhang Hong as exemplars of the
many extraordinary developments in seventeenth-century
painting. See Cahill 1982. The seventeenth century differs
from the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in this
unique merging of the two planes, where in less mountainous, hilly lake landscapes they have much in common.
24 In his master’s thesis Liu Zhiyuan dated the Li Tang
attribution, largely on structural and morphological
grounds, to the mid-seventeenth century (Liu Zhiyuan
2002). Now, using brushwork behavior, it is possible to
arrive at a similar conclusion but a slightly later date by
comparing the painting’s brushwork behavior with that
of other works of the seventeenth century. Liu argued
that in structure and morphology the Li Tang attribution
Soughing Pines (signature dated to 1124 but unmentioned
in early sources and without stylistic followers throughout
the Yuan and Ming) resembles a landscape ascribed to Gu
Zhengyi, an admirer and follower of Dong Qichang. At that
time we had not studied in detail the phenomenon of the
rising ground plane of the late Wanli period seen in works
ascribed to Wen Jia, Wen Boren, Song Xu, and Zhang Hong,
a creative phenomenon that Dong Qichang must have put
to a stop by the Chongzhen period (1628–44), bringing the
ground plane down again, separate from the vertical plane.
This is a subtle but critical shift in structure and perception
of style. Given this new understanding, it would now seem
that the Li Tang attribution comes after the period of the
Gu Zhengyi work and the restoration of the ground plane,
while still maintaining its tightly pressed layers of scalelike
mountain shale, profusely modeled with formless strokes
in the manner of Gu’s application of hemp-fiber strokes,
but using slanted “academic” strokes. The painting retains
the tightness and highly pressed sense of compaction of the
Wanli period, but has considerably lowered the viewpoint
in keeping with Dong Qichang’s command to return to the
Four Masters of the Yuan.
25 See Cahill 1982. This argues in favor of a date after Gu
Zhengyi in terms of structural analysis, and, as we shall see
below, after the Wang Shimin attribution of the late seventeenth century in brushwork analysis.
672
stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
figure 20 Attributed to Gu Zhengyi (active 1575–1597). Landscape. Detail.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 104.2 × 63 cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei
figure 21 Gazetteer of Nanjing Monasteries ( Jinling fanchazhi ),
Ming dynasty, 1623. Woodblock print, 22.5 × 31 cm
figure 22 Attributed to Wang Shimin (1592–1680). Landscape after Wang Meng, 1667.
Detail. Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 170 × 69.6 cm.
National Palace Museum, Taipei
figure 23 Attributed to Li Tang (ca. 1070s–ca. 1150s). Soughing Pines in Myriad Valleys,
mid- to late 17th century. Detail. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 188.7 × 139.8 cm.
National Palace Museum, Taipei
673
part five : learning from nature
fig 19
fig 23
fig 13
fig 16
fig 20
appeared around 1623, in the late Ming. We see an early seventeenth-century structure that in its deployment of “brushstrokes” reveals practices current already at the
end of the sixteenth century, with single stroke-types in unvaried widths filling the
space with no intention to indicate topographical features or texture. While there
remains some individuality between needle clusters so that no two trees are identical, in the abbreviation and condensation of pine needles in this woodcut print, the
cluster formation has been reduced to either T-shaped combs or groups of trifoliate
strokes. Simplification and merging of leaves in the tree groups have progressed to
the point where in another half century they will group so densely that a vertical line
representing a trunk may be inserted anywhere among the merged, continuous piles
of horizontal strokes, or dots or slashes, in casual indication of distant woods, without
losing the pictorial import. This we see in the last image, Soughing Pines. Meanwhile,
in the earlier woodcut image, already the leafy bushes behind the left-hand buildings
have become a plane covered with identical dots.
The process of merging, fusing, and confusing the horizontal tree top strokes is
less advanced in the Dong Yuan attribution (fig. 19), which we assign to the early seventeenth century. But it is clearly more advanced in the Li Tang attribution (fig. 23),
where the horizontal distant treetop leaves are fused and confused far more than
those in the Xia Gui attribution (fig. 13), and even more than the distant trees in the
Wang Hui copy of the Fuchun scroll (fig. 16) of 1673.
In the early seventeenth century, during the latter part of the Wanli period, distant
trees are just barely distinguished from one another, and vertical strokes are inserted
at intervals, among the plethora of short horizontal strokes, to indicate tree trunks
in a distant grove, as we see in the Dong Yuan attribution, Mountain Hall in Dongtian
(fig. 19), where distant trees are still barely legible as distinct units. But by the time
of the Li Tang attribution, which probably appeared after Wang Hui’s 1673 copy of the
Fuchun scroll, distant trees have been reduced to a mass of horizontal strokes where
the vertical strokes no longer attempt to define individual trees, let alone depth of
field. Fine points such as integrity and legibility in distant tree groups are no ­longer of
import; we are left with a mess of horizontals interspersed with haphazardly placed
verticals to stand for trees in a grove. In this case, we witness a structural back-step
in lowering the ground plane, while the brushwork behavior continues its course
of becoming ever thinner, increasingly devoid of descriptive purpose. This process
is visible in the “contemporary” painting ascribed to Gu Zhengyi (fig. 20). The kitelike composition, with its ever-rising background mountain that seemingly does not
touch the ground, resembles that in the Dong Yuan attribution Mountain Hall, where
the central mountain, fronted by rocks sprouting twisting tree clumps with ostentatious roots, with sides closing in between flat, fish-scale-like flanks densely covered
with meaningless “modeling strokes” that leave no breathing space, foreshadows the
compositional schemata of the Li Tang attribution Soughing Pines, a work that is identical in composition, structure, morphology, and brushwork behavior.
Observing the brushwork behavior in the six works discussed here, we note their
similarity. “Typical” strokes are applied with monotony to blanket the flat planes
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stanley-baker : brushwork behavior
bounded by black, even contour lines, a far cry from the original Southern Song
­application of modeling strokes in the Ma Lin album leaf (figs. 1, 9). The layers of
mountain flanks are stacked in echelons like fish scales, without a hint of intervening space and without descriptive purpose. By the early seventeenth century, painters had lost touch with more convincing brush modes even when making forgeries
in the manner of the Southern Song or the early to mid-Ming academic manner after
Dai Jin and Wu Wei. Paintings in the name of Dai Jin, and also Lü Ji (active ca. 1475–
ca. 1503), the academic flower-and-bird painter whose works mostly appear to reflect
the late Wanli structure, morphology, and brushwork behavior, continue to be produced up to the end of the Ming Tianqi (1621–27) and Chongzhen periods when the
ax stroke, previously prominent as a bold and angular “school badge,” went into decline, becoming thin slivers. By the Qianlong era (1736–95) of the Qing, the ax strokes
lose altogether the graceful undulations of seventeenth-century slanted brushwork,
except for distinctly decorative accents that grace the more sumptuous or courtly
works under antique names.26 But the broad, oblique ax stroke had by then been long
forgotten, in function and in form.
references
Cahill, James. 1980. An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T’ang, Sung, and Yüan. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
_. 1982. The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dong Qichang yanjiu wenji 董其昌研究文集 (Collected Research Papers on Dong Qichang). 1998.
Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe.
Liu Zhiyuan 劉智遠 . 2002. Li Tang Wanhe Songfengtu zhi yanjiu (The Problem of Wanhe Songfeng
­Ascribed to Li Tang). Unpublished master’s thesis, Tainan National College of the Arts.
Stanley-Baker, Joan. 1977. Development of Brush-Modes in Sung and Yüan. Artibus Asiae 39, no. 1:
13–59.
_. 1986. Forgeries in Chinese Painting. Oriental Art 32, no. 1 (Spring): 54–66.
_. 1990. Repainting Wang Meng: Problems in Accretion. Artibus Asiae 50, nos. 3/4 (­Winter): 161–
231.
_. 1995. Old Masters Repainted: Wu Zhen (1280–1354): Prime Objects and Accretions. Hong Kong:
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_. 2006. Identifying Shen Zhou (1427–1509). Methodological Problems in Authentication: A
Work in Process. Oriental Art 55, no. 3: 48–60.
Sung, Hou-mei. 2006. Rijin Qingguang (The Unknown World of the Ming Court Painters: The Ming
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Wenren hua yu Nanbei zong lunwen huibian 文人畫與南北宗論文彙編 . (Collected Papers on Literati
Painting and the Southern and Northern Schools). 1989. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe.
26 This has been demonstrated in my study “Art History Without Names” (see note 1).
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fig 1
fig 9