The President and Fellows of Harvard College Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Confronting Dynastic Change: Painting after Mongol Reunification of North and South China Author(s): Peter Charles Sturman Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 35, Intercultural China (Spring, 1999), pp. 142- 169 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20167022 . Accessed: 05/08/2011 12:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The President and Fellows of Harvard College and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. http://www.jstor.org 142 RES 35 SPRING 1999 '':^K?'r'*2d N=^il^Sifettte? Figure 12. Gao Kegong (1248-1310), Clouds Encircling Elegant Peaks, inscription dated 1309. Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 182.3 x 106.7 cm. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China. Confronting dynastic change Painting after Mongol reunification of North and South China PETERCHARLES STURMAN The Mongol conquest of South China in 1276 North and South reunited a that had been divided country More than have since and for 150 and thirty years passed Chu-tsing geographically politically years Li's landmark of Zhao Autumn Colors an era of tense acculturation. Former study Mengfu's inaugurated on the and Hua Mountains the of the (960-1279) with Qiao inaugurated subjects Song dynasty grappled detailed of the of literati that their outsider status under while study resurgence painting foreign rulership, took at the onset of the Yuan The new place dynasty (fig. 1).1 representatives of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) monograph emphasized Zhao Mengfu's application of serving in the south, including Mongols, Central "antique concepts" {guyi) to his painting, building upon Asians, and Chinese from the north, to a adapted writers' observations of how Zhao was a colophon cultural climate that possessed specific and inspired by the famous Tang dynasty poet and painter longstanding historical character. This period, which Wang Wei (699-759). Vital to Zhao's innovations was more or less coincided with the first 20 to 30 years of his trip north, responding to the Yuan court's invitation Mongol rule, is also notable for an extraordinary to serve the new dynasty, and his consequent exposure diversity of subject matter and style in painting. To to collections of earlier paintings by Tang (618-907), date, this diversity has largely been accepted at face Five Dynasties-period (907-979), and Northern Song value?a consequence of the forced mingling of (960-1127) artists. Zhao was also exposed to the cultures?with little, if as any, dialogue perceived distinct traditions of in the north between and painting practiced taking place compartmentalized styles the and a half of and were during century geographical genres. But dialogues taking place, in reaction to political division that followed the fall of the Northern the difficult circumstances that arose from the change of dynasties, and paintings that appear to occupy distinct spheres occasionally reflect shared concerns. 1. Chu-tsing Li, The Autumn Colors on the Ch'iao and Hua This essay a closer look at a number of provides Mountains: A Landscape by Chao Meng-fu (Ascona: Artibus Asiae of Yuan date well paintings early that, although Publishers, 1965). Iam much indebted to Professor Li's many studies known, have not been viewed collectively as on Zhao Mengfu, as well as those of a number of his students, who have followed Dr. Li's the late thirteenth and fourteenth individual voices mutually engaged in the issues of path through centuries. Among the studies that I have consulted are Arthur Musen their day. The art of two southerners, Qian Xuan (circa Kao, 'The Life and Art of Li K'an" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1235-before 1307) and Gong Kai (1222-1307), will 1979); Curtis Hansma Brizendine, "Cloudy Mountains: Kao K'o-kung be the focus. Zhao primary Landscape paintings by (1248-1310) and the Mi Tradition" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, Mengfu (1254-1322), another southerner, and the 1980); Ankeney Weitz, "Collecting and Connoisseurship in Early Yuan China: Zhou Mi's lu" of Central Asian Gao Kegong (1248-1310), will act as Yunyan guoyan (Ph.D. diss., University Kansas, 1994). A note of debt is owed to bookends to the main argument, an special Marilyn Wong providing under the name for In Gleysteen, formerly publishing Marilyn Wong Fu, introduction and conclusion. the on background, her work Xianyu Shu (1257?-1302) and the north-south cultural these is the writer and connecting individuals, interchange in the early Yuan. Her published work includes "The connoisseur Zhou Mi (1232-1298). Zhou Mi's active Impact of the Re-unification: Northern Elements in the Life and Art of Shu (1257??1302) and Their Relation to Yuan Literati social engagement in and around Hangzhou with Hsien-y? Early Culture," in China Under Mongol Rule, ed. John D. Langlois, Jr. most of the prominent cultural figures of the day, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 371-433, and these four artists, foster the including helped "Hsien-y? Shu's Calligraphy and his 'Admonitions' Scroll of 1299" north-south intercultural that dialogue shaped (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1983). See also her "Calligraphy and painting's development in the early Yuan. Painting: Some Sung and Post-Sung Parallels in North and South?A Reassessment of the Chiang-nan Tradition," inWords and Images, ed. Alfreda Murck and Wen C Fong (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), pp. 141-172. 144 RES 35 SPRING 1999 to Song. The literati styles of such Northern Song ideas, and historical position, paraphrase the objects we amateurs as Su Shi (1037-1101), Wen Tong of Chu-tsing Li's attention 30 years ago. But perhaps (1019-1079), and Mi Fu (1057-1107/08) were of can go a step further and affirm its importance beyond were particular importance. These styles perpetuated the painter's personal achievements, for Zhao Mengfu's comments on by painters of the Jin dynasty (1125-1234) and in landscape directly and uniquely the many ways were considered antithetical to the cultural schism between north and south, Song and serves as a academic style of professional painting practiced at the Yuan, and thus monument of the period. to or court during the Southern Song (1127-1279).2 The painting is dedicated Gongjin, Zhou Mi, Consciousness of a schism that was geographical, the prominent cultural figure of the late Southern Song was a an of ideological, and cultural prominent factor and established "loyalist" during the early years In on behind Zhao Mengfu's transformation of painting at the Mongol rule.3 Zhao Mengfu's inscription the end of the thirteenth century. painting, dated 1295, we learn that Zhou Mi's family Autumn Colors well deserves its accorded status as hailed from Qi, in the north (corresponding to the representative of Zhao's art, personal style, aesthetic 3. For information on Zhou Mi, see Jennifer W. Jay, A Change in Western 2. Susan Bush, "'Clearing After Snow in the Min Mountains' and Dynasties: Loyal ism in Thirteenth Century China (Bellingham: no. Weitz note Chin Landscape Painting," Oriental Art, n.s., 11, 3 (1965):163-172; Washington Press, 1991), esp. pp. 195-242; (see 1). Chu on id., "Literati Culture Under the Chin," Oriental Art, n.s., 15, no. 2 tsing Li's scholarship in his monograph Autumn Colors (see note 1) (1969):103-112. is another important source of information on Zhou Mi. Sturman: Confronting dynastic change 145 Figure 1. Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Autumn Colors on the Qiao and Hua Mountains, dated 1296. Handscroll (right to left), ink and color on paper, 28.4 x 93.2 cm. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China. north of modern day Shandong Province). Zhao, scroll, added four inscriptions directly on the painting's as having served tongshou (Vice-Governor) of Qizhou surface and another five among the earlier colophons (central Shandong) from 1292-1295, became familiar that follow. Qianlong's inscriptions, totaling almost 900 with the scenery of Zhou Mi's ancestral homeland, characters (copious even by the standards of his fast as a never which Zhou Mi, southerner, had the moving brush), reveal that much of the emperor's opportunity to know. Zhao singles out Mount appreciation of the painting stemmed from his Huafuzhu (Hua for short), which ismentioned in the opportunity to do what Zhou Mi could not: visit the ancient Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Qizhou region. Passing through the area on an imperial as most Annals, the famous mountain in the region. inspection tour, Qianlong suddenly thought of the a "Lofty and precipitous, it rises isolated in most painting and ordered that it be sent by courier in order unusual manner," Zhao Mengfu writes. He ends his to compare itwith the region's genuine landscape. inscription thus: "To the east, that isMount Qiao. I Doing so, he discovered an interesting problem in Zhao on establish the painting's title 'Autumn Colors the Mengfu's relative placement of the two mountains.