COMMUNIST OR CONFUCIAN? THE TRADITIONALIST PAINTER LU YANSHAO (1909-1993) IN THE 1950S
THESIS
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Yanfei YIN
B.A.
Graduate Program in History of Art
The Ohio State University
2012
Master's Examination Committee:
Professor Julia F. Andrews Advisor
Professor Christopher A. Reed
Copyright by
Yanfei YIN
2012
Abstract
The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 triggered a deluge of artistic challenges for the Chinese ink painter. Lu Yanshao (陸儼少 1909-1993), an artist skilled in poetry, painting and calligraphy, had built his renown on landscape paintings following a traditionalist style. As of 1949, however, Lu began to make figure paintings that adhered to the guidelines established by the Communist Party.
Dramatic social and political changes occurred in the 1950s under the new
Communist regime. The Anti-Rightist Campaign, launched in 1957, targeted a large number of educated people, including many artists. Lu Yanshao was condemned as a
Rightist and was forced to endure four years of continuous labor reform (laodong gaizao
勞動改造) in the countryside before finally ridding himself of the label of Rightist in
1961. Starting in 1957, Lu shifted his focus from making figure paintings for the country’s sake to his personal interest – creating landscape paintings. In 1959, the artist completed the first twenty five leaves of his famous Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s
Poems. The surviving fourteen leaves combined painting, calligraphy and poetry, and are considered to be early paintings of Lu’s mature phase.
Lu Yanshao had studied Confucian texts since he was very young. In this thesis, I argue that changes in his approach to art and to his artistic career after being labeled a
Rightist in 1957 can be productively considered from the perspective of the Confucian
i teaching of Mencius: “If poor, they [“men of antiquity” 古之人] attended to their own virtue in solitude; if advanced to dignity, they made the whole kingdom virtuous as well
窮則獨善其身，達則兼濟天下.”1 That is to say, a scholar privileged to hold office will do everything in his power to serve effectively; if suffering from adversity, however, the scholar will cultivate his personal talents instead. It was by focusing on his own artistic virtue while otherwise suffering as an alleged “Rightist” that Lu gradually entered the mature phase of his artistic career in 1959.
Between 1949 and 1957, Lu Yanshao made figure paintings based on the
Communist Party’s guidelines because he wanted to contribute to the newly established country through his artwork. Serving the country through art accords with the idea of making “the whole kingdom virtuous.” However, in Lu’s view, the art bureaucracy, which enforced the Party’s ideology, rejected him by labeling him a Rightist in 1957. At this time, Lu experienced a psychological nadir. After years of adjusting himself as a
Chinese ink painter in the new society between 1949 and 1957, Lu returned to Chinese landscape painting, developing a brilliant style out of a desperate situation. This maturation in Lu Yanshao’s art can also be considered from a Confucian perspective, especially Mencius’ teaching, “If poor, they [“men of antiquity”] attended to their own virtue in solitude.”
1 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 453. ii
For my grandparents
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to many people without whom this thesis would not be possible. First of all, I want to thank my adviser Dr. Julia F. Andrews. It was Dr. Andrews who helped me expand my view of Chinese art in the twentieth century, particularly in the People’s
Republic of China. My interest in the artist Lu Yanshao originated from a survey of
Meishu magazine between 1954 and 1965. These are valuable sources for the study of
Chinese art history during the People’s Republic period. Dr. Andrews generously lent her collection of Meishu to me and provided me helpful guides for using this material.
During the process of writing and revising my thesis, Dr. Andrews gave me many valuable suggestions. I really appreciate her thoughts and patience. I would also thank Dr.
Christopher A. Reed in the Department of History at The Ohio State University for his teaching in seminars and his valuable suggestions for my thesis, which helped me develop my methodology and taught me how to improve academic writing. Without these teachings, suggestions and support from Dr. Andrews and Dr. Reed, my thesis would not have been possible. Here, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Andrews and Dr.
Reed.
I would also show my thanks to my family and friends. I thank my family members for trusting, loving and supporting me all the time. My grandparents showed their concern about my thesis, and told me stories of the 1950s. My father helped me buy
iv books in China about Lu Yanshao, and my mother mailed those books to the U.S. My friends also helped me a lot. Elise David, my colleague in the Department of History of
Art at The Ohio State University, was very kind to help me edit my English. Hyunkyung
Kim, another colleague from my department, always encouraged me with her warm words. Wang Hao at Zhejiang University helped me download useful articles in Chinese from the databases to which I do not have access. I will also remember the days and nights that I spent in Thompson Library with my friend Hao Qian, a recent graduate from the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University. Thank you all for your help and psychological support.
v
Vita
2009...... B.A. Literature, Wuhan University
2009 to present ...... History of Art, The Ohio State University
2010 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department
of History of Art, The Ohio State University
Fields of Study
Major Field: History of Art
vi
Table of Contents
Abstract ...... i
Dedication ...... iii
Acknowledgements ...... iv
Table of Contents ...... vii
List of Figures ...... viii
Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1
Chapter 2: State of the Field ...... 14
Chapter 3: Serve the Country: Lu Yanshao’s Figure Painting in the 1950s ...... 21
Chapter 4: Lu Yanshao’s Landscape Paintings After Du Fu’s Poems in the 1950s ...... 41
Chapter 5: Conclusion ...... 64
Bibliography ...... 66
Appendix A: Important Events of Lu Yanshao’s Artistic Life ...... 72
Appendix B: Figures ...... 77
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List of Figures
Figure 1 Wang Mian (1310-1359), A Prunus in Moonlight, undated (c. 1350s), hanging scroll, ink on silk, The Cleveland Museum of Art (after Maggie Bickford, “The
Flowering Plum in Painting,” in Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice [New Haven: Yale University
Art Gallery, 1985], p. 81)...... 78
Figure 2 Shen Zhou (1427-1509), Rainy Thoughts, 1487, hanging scroll, ink on paper,
67.1 x 30.6 cm, National Palace Museum, Taibei ...... 79
Figure 3 Wen Zhengming (1470-1559), Spring in Jiangnan, hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, National Palace Museum, Taibei (after Wupai hua jiushi nian zhan [Taibei:
Guoli gugong bowu yuan, 1975], p. 14) ...... 80
Figure 4 Shitao (1630-1724), Wilderness Color, one leaf from an album of twelve, 1700, ink and color on paper, 27.6 x 21.6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Artstor) ...... 81
Figure 5 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 1, 1950, ink and color on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=411) ...... 82
Figure 6 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 6, 1950, ink and color on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=406) ...... 82
Figure 7 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 7, 1950, ink on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=408) ...... 83
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Figure 8 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 8, 1950, ink and color on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=404) ...... 83
Figure 9 Lu Yanshao, Teaching Mama to Read, 1956, ink and color on paper, 78.5 x 52 cm (after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chuban she, 2002], p. 17)
...... 84
Figure 10 Lu Yanshao, After Palace Ladies Playing Double Sixes, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 39 x 27 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen
Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 43) ...... 85
Figure 11 Lu Yanshao, After Night Revels of Han Xizai, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 25 x 30 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan
[Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 25)...... 86
Figure 12 Lu Yanshao, After Tao Yuanming Reterning to Seclusion, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 28 x 29 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen
Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 29) ...... 87
Figure 13 Lu Yanshao, After Dongfang Shuo, 1956, ink on paper, 31 x 15 cm (after Lu
Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 83) ...... 88
Figure 14 Lu Yanshao, After Elegant Gathering, 1957, ink on paper, 27 x 28 cm (after Lu
Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 31) ...... 89
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Figure 15 Lu Yanshao, After Lady in Autumn, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 29 x
23 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou:
Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 41) ...... 90
Figure 16 Lu Yanshao, After Chen Hongshou’s Painting, 1956, ink on paper, 29 x 24 cm
(after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 35) ...... 91
Figure 17 Lu Yanshao, Jiao mama shizi, 1957, ink and color on paper, 48 x 29 cm (after
Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 150) ...... 92
Figure 18 Lu Yanshao, Figures, 1956, ink and color on paper, 22 x 32 cm (after Lu
Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 119) ...... 93
Figure 19 Lu Yanshao, Learning, 1957, ink and color on paper, 48 x 30 cm (after Lu
Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 153) ...... 94
Figure 20 Jiang Feng, Studying is Good, 1942, woodcut (after Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994], p. 21) ...... 95
Figure 21 Tang Wenxuan, Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-law on Their Way to Winter
Study, 1954, ink and color on paper, 115 x 67 cm, National Art Museum of China ...... 96
Figure 22 Jiang Yan, Testing Mom, 1953, ink and color on paper, 113.6 x 64.6 cm,
National Art Museum of China...... 97
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Figure 23 Lu Yanshao, Diligent People in Spring Morning, 1963, ink and color on paper,
138 x 68 (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou:
Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 177) ...... 98
Figure 24 Lu Yanshao, People Start to Leave the Mountain Market, 1964, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou:
Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 169) ...... 99
Figure 25 Lu Yanshao, People Start to Leave the Mountain Market, 1964, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou:
Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 171) ...... 100
Figure 26 Lu Yanshao, Fish Harvesting in Xin’anjiang Reservoir, 1965, ink and color on paper, 69 x 53 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan
[Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 175)...... 101
Figure 27 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Du Fu’s North Mountain in Dongtun, 1956, ink and color on paper, 23.5 x 36 cm (after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002], p. 165) ...... 102
Figure 28 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf one from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 1) ...... 103
Figure 29 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf two from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 2) ...... 104
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Figure 30 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf three from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 3) ...... 105
Figure 31 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf four from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 4) ...... 106
Figure 32 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf five from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 5) ...... 107
Figure 33 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf six from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 6) ...... 108
Figure 34 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf seven from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 7) ...... 109
Figure 35 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf eight from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 8) ...... 110
Figure 36 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf nigh from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 9) ...... 111
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Figure 37 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf ten from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 10) ...... 112
Figure 38 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf eleven from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 11) ...... 113
Figure 39 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf twelve from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 12) ...... 114
Figure 40 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf thirteen from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 13) ...... 115
Figure 41 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf fourteen from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai
[Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 14) ...... 116
Figure 42 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Du Fu’s North Mountain in Dongtun, 1979, ink and color on paper, 49 x 93 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen
Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 167) ...... 117
Figure 43 Lu Yanshao, Scholar under a Pine Tree, 1980, ink and color on paper, 24.5 x
24.5 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou:
Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 165) ...... 117
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Figure 44 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Qin Guan’s Poem, 1944, ink and color on paper
(after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002], p. 59) .. 118
Figure 45 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Tao Qian’s Poem, 1957, ink and color on paper
(after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002], p. 64) .. 118
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Chapter 1: Introduction
A salient feature of Chinese art in the pre-modern period is the combination of painting, calligraphy and poetry—also known as the “three perfections”2—within a single image: “By brushing in a poem on his painting and thus using both word and image, the artist created a verbal discourse and a broader context in which to express himself.”3
Despite the dramatic challenges to Chinese ink painting that followed the establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949, the “verbal discourse and broader context” created by the combination of “the three perfections” is a legacy that continued to be passed down to traditionalist artists. Lu Yanshao (陸儼少 1909-1993) was an ink painter who excelled in the “three perfections” during the Republican era (1912-1949), blending these arts together into his landscape painting. After the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949, however, Lu’s painting undertook a fundamental change; turning to the subject of figure painting, the artist adapted his style to the Party’s new
2 Poetry, calligraphy, and painting together are called “the three perfections,” (sanjue 三 絕) a term that “was coined during the eighth century in praise of the Tang poet-painter Cheng Ch’ien,” according to Qi Gong, “The Relationship between Poetry Calligraphy, and Painting,” in Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 11. See also Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections (New York: George Braziller, 1974 & 1999), 11. The original source for both Michael Sullivan and Qi Gong is found in Zhang Yanyuan (張彥遠 ca. 815 –after 875), Lidai minghua ji 歷代名畫記 (847). See Huashi congshu 畫史叢書 vol. 1 (Taibei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1974), 118. 3 Murck and Fong, ed., Words and Images, xv. 1 guidelines. It was only after Lu was denounced as a “Rightist” during the Anti-Rightest
Campaign in 1957 that the artist finally returned to the practice of “the three perfections,” bringing forth a unique style of ink painting.
The origin of “the three perfections” may be traced back to a Tang dynasty painter,
Zheng Qian (鄭虔 685-764), whose painting, calligraphy and poems were hailed by the
Xuanzong emperor (685-762) as “the three perfections of Zheng Qian.” This tradition of combining painting and poetry was followed by artists in the Song (960-1279), Yuan
(1271-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. While some artists created pictorial depictions based on poems written by earlier poets or artists, other artists chose to compose and illustrate poems of their own making. As early as the Song dynasty, examples combining painting and poetry emerged in landscape painting, as epitomized in “Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang.”4 Moreover, during the Song, the plum blossom became a potent symbol of the “three perfections,” especially in the artwork of literati artist Yang Wujiu (楊無咎 1097-1169). As Maggie Bickford elaborates, ink plum painting “was considered to be the convergence of the ‘Three Excellences’ – poetry, calligraphy, and painting – in an integrated practice.”5 The Yuan-dynasty artist Wang
Mian (王冕 1287-1359), Bickford continues, epitomizes “the culmination of the growing intimacy between poetry and painting in plum art.6 Wang left many examples in which he coordinated image and verse [Figure 1]: “By conceiving the painted image and the poetic
4 Alfreda Murck, “The Meaning of the ‘Eight Views of Hsiao-Hsiang’: Poetry and Painting in Sung China” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1995). 5 Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 16. 6 Ibid., 16. 2 inscription as a formal and expressive unity, Wang Mian opened up subtle and powerful expressive possibilities for himself and for those who followed in the momei genre.”7
During the ensuing Ming dynasty, Wu School artists such as Shen Zhou (沈周 1427-
1509) and Wen Zhengming (文徵明 1470-1559) created many works based on poems.
Shen Zhou usually combined painting with his own poetry. To choose one of the many examples, here is a landscape with poem by Shen Zhou [Figure 2]. Wen Zhengming similarly harmonizes painting and poetry in his hanging scroll Spring in Jiangnan
(Jiangnan chun 江南春 [Figure 3]), which draws inspiration from the poetry of the Yuan painter Ni Zan (倪瓚 1301-1374). In the inscription, Wen Zhengming claims the following: “I paint and write after two poems of master Yunlin (alternate name of Ni
Zan) 追和雲林先生詞二首.”8 Qing-dynasty painters continued the legacy, as exemplified in the artwork of individualist Shitao (石濤 1642-1707). In one leaf from an album of twelve paintings, Shitao beautifully illustrates a poem by Tang poet Du Fu
[Figure 4].
The practice of integrating painting, poetry, and calligraphy was still cherished by artists in Republican China and even in the People’s Republic of China. In 1950, Lu
Yanshao made an eight-section handscroll after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn,
7 Maggie Bickford, “The Flowering Plum in Painting,” in Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1985), 79. 8 Wen’s painting is reproduced in Wupai hua jiushi nian zhan 吳派畫九十年展 (Taibei: Guoli gugong bowu yuan, 1975), 14. 3 concluding the work with six poems composed by himself [Figure 5-8].9 Lu’s inheritance and continuation of “the three perfections” is closely related to his education in Jiading and Shanghai.
Lu Yanshao would have had several educational choices in the 1920s. As a result of
China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, administrative and educational reforms were initiated to strengthen China.10 This modernization of education was continued in Republican China. In art education, the study of Western art was popular in
China’s artistic centers, especially Shanghai. Thus, the traditionally oriented painting that sought to realize “the three perfections” was no longer the only choice for an artist of
Lu’s generation. For example, a group of six aspiring artists, including Liu Haisu (劉海
粟 1896-1994), and Ding Song (丁悚 1891-1969), established the Shanghai Art Academy
(Shanghai tuhua meishu yuan 上海圖畫美術院),11 which was officially opened in 1913 for the study of Western art.12 Lu Yanshao, who was a native of the nearby suburb
Jiading, entered Chengzhong Middle School (Chengzhong zhongxue 澄衷中學) in
Shanghai in 1922. While attending Chengzhong Middle School, Lu read the Confucian classics, including the Analects and History of the Former Han Dynasty.13 He also began
9 The six poems are recorded in Lu’s autobiography. See Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 38-39. 10 Mayching Margaret Kao, “China’s Response to the West in Art: 1898-1937” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1972), 61. 11 Ibid., 70-71. 12 Zhao Li and Yu Ding ed., Zhongguo youhua wenxian: 1542-2000 (Changsha: Hu’nan meishu chubanshe, 2001), 380. 13 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 18-20. Analects is the foundational classic of Confucianism. The ideology lying behind History of the Former Han Dynasty is also Confucian. In Lu 4 his early study of Chinese traditionalist painting by emulating the collotype reproductions of masterpieces in Album of Famous Chinese Paintings (Zhongguo minghua ji 中國名畫
集).14 After graduating from Chengzhong Middle School, Lu made the decision to pursue ink painting; rather than attending the Shanghai Art Academy, which provided instruction in Western art and oils, Lu Yanshao entered the Wuxi Art Academy (Wuxi meishu zhuanke xuexiao 無錫美術專科學校 1925-1933) in 1926.15 There, he studied the indigenous art of Chinese painting, known as guohua 國畫.16 After only six months of study, however, Lu became dissatisfied with the quality of instruction at Wuxi Art
Yanshao’s early education, Confucianism played an important role, which I argue was influential to his artistic approach and career in People’s Republic of China. See Chapter Four. 14 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 218. Album of Famous Chinese Paintings was published in collotype by Youzheng shuju 有正書局 of Di Baoxian 狄葆賢 (alternate name Chuqing 楚卿), the owner of Pingdeng ge 平等閣. It appeared from October 1908 to May 1909. See review by Edouard Chavannes, “Tchong Kouo ming houa tsi ‘Recueil des peintures celebres de la Chine’,” T’oung Pao, second series, vol. 10, no. 4 (1909), 515-516. James Cahill dates the preface to 1909, and mentions “The same material in 40 parts, issued from 1923. Cross-references given for some, but not all paintings.” See James Cahill, An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T’ang, Sung, and Yuan 中國古畫索引 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 380. 15 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 219. 16 “The term for Chinese painting, hua, sometimes paired with calligraphy as shuhua, was challenged by the introduction of Western painting, which was called xihua, or sometimes youhua, oil painting. Although the terminology was in flux in this period, with shuhua often the default term to identify Chinese painting, gradually, terms such as guohua (national painting, or, or in some cases an abbreviation for Chinese painting, Zhongguohua) appeared as parallels to xihua. Fundamentally, these are differences in medium and practice, with xihua referring to oil painting, drawing, and watercolor painting on Western paper, whereas guohua was painting in ink and water-based pigments on Chinese paper (made of bark or straw). The dictionary definition of guohua is sometimes given as “traditional Chinese painting,” which can only be taken to mean painting that uses the traditional medium, regardless of subject or style.” Julia Andrews, e-mail message to author, December 2, 2011. 5
Academy, and returned to the old tutorial system.17 The young enthusiast continued to study guohua with Wang Tongyu (王同愈 1856-1941) in Jiading, and with Feng Chaoran
(馮超然 1882-1954) in Shanghai.18 His decision to study guohua stemmed, at least in part, from his early training in poetry, painting and calligraphy, a topic which will be discussed in detail in Chapter Four.
Having established that Lu Yanshao consciously elected to study traditional ink painting, we must now address the issue of what is “traditionalist painting?” What are the cultural parameters that defined guohua in early twentieth century China? The future of
Chinese ink painting triggered heated debate in the 1910s to 1930s. On the one hand, in
1918 Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀 1879-1942) advocated that guohua should be revolutionalized by adopting the realism of Western art.19 On the other hand, however, Chen Hengque (陳
衡恪 1876-1923) published a staunch defense of ink painting in his influential article
“The Value of Literati Painting (Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi 文人畫之價值)” in 1921.20 Chen’s defense hinged on the four essential aspects of literati painting: personality (renpin 人品),
17Unlike the modern art school system, the old tutorial system relies on apprenticeship, or working under a single painting master on a one-to-one basis. Usually the prospective disciple needs to perform a ritual in order to become an offical disciple of the master. Thereafter, the disciple would visit the master’s studio or home regularly to study painting and to assist the master with many practical matters. 18 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 3. 19 Chen Duxiu, “Meishu geming,” in Ershi shiji Zhongguo meishu wenxuan, vol. 2 ed. Shui Tianzhong and Lang Shaojun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 1999), 29. 20 Chen published two versions of this article. The first version was in colloquial Chinese (baihua 白話), and later Chen published the other version that was in classical Chinese (wenyan 文言). The version used here was in classical Chinese. 6 erudition (xuewen 學問), talent (caiqing 才情), and thought (sixiang 思想).21 In addition to the two opposing positions taken by Chen Duxiu and Chen Hengque, the Chinese
Painting Society (Zhongguo huahui 中國畫會), founded in Shanghai a decade later in
1931, advocated the preservation of traditionalist techniques while adopting the modern purpose of sustaining national honor.22
Underlying artistic practice, then, was the fundamental question: should guohua be
Westernized or preserve its more traditional features? With the flourishing of modern photographic publishing in early twentieth-century China, artists had unprecedented agency in their choice of a personal style. Artists who chose to continue traditionalist
Chinese painting, while not required to follow any particular style of the past, did have to commit to the serious study and mastery of at least three essential elements: brushwork, subject matter, and “the three perfections.” First, a good traditionalist painting should have distinguishable brushwork based upon ancient masters. Second, artists were expected to excel in the subject matter characteristic of traditional painting. While landscape painting was the most prestigious subject matter in Chinese art history, bird- and-flower paintings and paintings of figures in antique dress, such as scholars and
21 Chen Hengque, “Wenren hua zhi jiazhi,” in Ershi shiji Zhongguo meishu wenxuan, vol. 2, ed. Shui Tianzhong and Lang Shaojun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 1999), 72. 22 In the manifesto “Origins of the Chinese Painting Society” written in 1930, the group states “The mission of the society is: 1. To develop the age-old art of our nation; 2. To publicize it abroad and raise our international artistic stature…” Trans. Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen “The Traditionalist Response to Modernity: The Chinese Painting Society of Shanghai,” in Visual Culture in Shanghai 1850-1930s, ed. Jason C. Kuo (Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2007), 83-85. Original source see, Meishu nianjian: 1947 (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue yuan chubanshe, 2008), 8. 7 beauties, were also common subject matter. Finally, a traditionalist painting often fulfilled the literati ideal of an inseparable connection between the three arts of painting, poetry, and calligraphy.
The subject of this thesis, Lu Yanshao, possessed these traditionalist aesthetic sensibilities, yet lived in an era of radical cultural reform. This thesis will explore exactly how an artist of such training and beliefs might survive and enter a mature phase of art after many of these fundamental principles were brought into question by the new artistic establishment of 1949. Of particular emphasis is the artist’s skillful intertwining of painting and poetry.
Before the PRC period, almost all of Lu Yanshao’s paintings were landscape paintings created in the traditionalist manner. Displaced by the Japanese invasion between 1937 and 1945, Lu fled to Sichuan, working as a clerk in a factory while painting on the side. Lu had his first solo show in Chongqing 重慶 in 1938, and the show toured to Chengdu 成都 and Leshan 樂山 in 1939. This event attracted the attention of important cultural celebrities, such as Shen Junru 沈鈞儒, Chen Shuren 陳樹人, Chang
Renxia 常任俠, Chen Zhifo 陳之佛, Huang Junbi 黃君璧, Wang Xingbei 王星北, and
Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛. 23
Dramatic political changes took place in China in the year 1949. Even before
October, “the task of bringing non-Communist artists under the control of the new regime
23 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 222-223. 8 began.”24 One major effort was the establishment of the All-China Art Workers
Association (Zhonghua quanguo meishu gongzuozhe xiehui 中華全國美術工作者協會) in July. On July 6, 1949, the Vice-Premier Zhou Enlai delivered an important lecture introducing the Party’s new guidelines for art and literature. Zhou called for the unification of all Chinese artists under the common goal of serving the nation and the people, especially the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Rather than advocating the raising of artistic standards, Zhou emphasized the popularization of art. Old literature and art should be remolded.25
It was also in the year 1949 that Lu Yanshao read for the first time Mao Zedong’s
Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature (1942) that emphasized the role of art in service to society.26 In the early 1950s, while Lu Yanshao still created Chinese landscape paintings, he also devoted much of his time and energy to drawing lianhuanhua27 and didactic figure paintings based on the Yan’an Forum and in line with Zhou Enlai’s guidelines for a new art.
Lu moved to Shanghai in 1951 and attended a three-month lianhuanhua class arranged by the Shanghai Municipal Cultural Bureau (Shanghai shi wenhua ju 上海市文
24 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 35. 25 Ibid., 37. See Zhou Enlai xuanji (Selected works of Zhou Enlai), vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1980), 351-357. 26 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 225. See Mao Zedong, Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1971), 265. 27 Lianhuanhua are “serial Illustrations, or comic books, promoting new cultural, social, and political policies.” See Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen, “Chinese Painting in the Post-Mao Era,” in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth- Century China (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1998), 278. 9
化局) and Shanghai Branch of the All-China Art Workers Association.28 After graduation, Lu became a lianhuanhua artist working at a publishing house called
Tongkang shuju 同康書局, and created several lianhuanhua, including his best known,
The Gadfly (Niumeng 牛虻).29 In 1953, the year Ai Qing (艾青 1910-1996) delivered his famous talk on reforming Chinese painting, Lu Yanshao’s new figure painting
Exploration in the Snowy Mountains (Xueshan kance 雪山勘測) was acquired by the
Chinese Artists Association (Zhongguo meishujia xiehui 中國美術家協會),30 as the newly restructured All-China Art Workers Association was called in October 1953. From that time on, Lu increasingly involved himself in the Chinese Artists Association. In
March 1956, Lu painted Teaching Mama to Read (Jiao mama shizi 教媽媽識字 [Figure
9]), which was exhibited in the Second National Guohua Exhibition and was published on the cover of the July issue of Meishu,31 the official art magazine of the Chinese Artists
Association.
Chapters One and Two of this thesis constitute an introduction and essay on the state of the field. Chapter Three introduces Lu Yanshao’s involvement with PRC art institutions and his artistic activities in the 1950s in order to explore how a traditionalist artist tried to serve “new China,” the PRC. I suggest that Lu Yanshao’s efforts to paint
Communist subject matter is related to his Confucian education. More specifically, Lu
28 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 75. 29 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 16. 30 Ibid., 227. 31 Ibid., 16. 10
Yanshao’s attempt to serve the country through painting was not only an outcome of his following Party dicta, but also might relate to his early education. I thus consider Lu’s decision from the perspective of the social responsibility of Confucian teaching, especially the saying by Mencius: “If poor, they [“men of antiquity” 古之人] attended to their own virtue in solitude; if advanced to dignity, they made the whole kingdom virtuous as well 窮則獨善其身，達則兼濟天下.”32 That is to say, a scholar privileged to hold office will do everything in his power to serve effectively; if suffering from adversity, however, the scholar will cultivate his personal talents instead. It was by focusing on his own artistic virtue while otherwise suffering as an alleged “Rightist” that
Lu gradually entered the mature phase of his artistic career in 1959.
The year 1957 was a turning point in Lu Yanshao’s life and career. Condemned as a
Rightist, Lu was forced to perform intensive manual labor until October 1961.33 At this time, Lu shifted his focus back to his primary interest, and in 1959 made a series of landscape paintings that reveal his mature artistic style for the first time. In Chapter Four,
I will compare three groups of paintings that illustrate Du Fu’s poems, and demonstrate that Lu Yanshao actually reached his mature phase after being punished as a Rightist. By
“mature phase,” I mean Lu’s practice of “the three perfections” reached a new level; the psychological connection between Lu Yanshao’s painting and Du Fu’s poems became increasingly complicated after 1959. These tensions were played out in his art during the
32 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 453. Although Lu Yanshao’s situation was far from “dignity 達,” compared with the pre- 1949 experience of working as a clerk in Sichuan, Lu was engaged with the Artists Association and had already earned some reputation between 1949 and 1957. 33 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 228-231. 11 first decade of the People’s Republic of China. Although his painting continued to develop in the subsequent period, this thesis focuses mainly on these crucial years between 1949 and 1959. Lu’s return to psychologically authentic forms of expression due to political punishment and removal from official position, a common experience of premodern Confucian officials, can be viewed as a moral response to the Confucian teaching, “If poor, they [“men of antiquity”] attended to their own virtue in solitude.”34
Chapters Three and Four together lead to the conclusion that before 1957 Lu’s artistic service to the country was not motivated simply by Communism, but also by
Confucianism. After being labeled a Rightist in 1957, Lu was put in a position of
“adversity 窮,” from which he turned back to authentic self-expression in the form of landscape painting that combined “the three perfections.” Lu Yanshao’s artistic life of the
1950s is thus best considered within a Confucian framework rather than from a purely
Communist point of view. By experiencing the changes from “dignity” to “adversity,”
Lu’s guohua style reached a new level of psychological intensity.
Although this thesis is not a study of Confucianism in the PRC, Confucianism and
Communism did share some similarities. For example, they both valued collective responsibility, public service, and idealized China’s peasant class while deemphasizing cities and commerce. Lu Yanshao’s educational background and artistic career suggest that his painting from the 1950s may be properly understood from a Confucian perspective.
34 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 453. 12
Writing his autobiography in his seventies,35 Lu Yanshao recalled in his early years reading the Analects (Lunyu 論語) of Confucius and History of the Former Han Dynasty
(Hanshu 漢書) written by Ban Gu (班固 32-92).36 After graduating from middle school in 1926, Lu Yanshao studied poetry privately with former Hanlin 翰林 scholar Wang
Tongyu, who also lent him works from his art collection. It was not until 1949 that Lu
Yanshao read Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature”
(1942).37 Lu’s traditional education laid a solid foundation for understanding his artistic career in the 1950s within a Confucian paradigm. Both Lu Yanshao’s service to the country through figure painting and his return to self-expressive landscape painting are reflections of his Confucian learning.
Lu’s artistic career in the 1950s was like a rope made of two twisted strands. One strand was Confucianism, and the other was Communism. Between 1949 and 1957, these two strands were well integrated. But after Lu was unjustly condemned as a Rightist, these strands started to unravel, and Confucian sensibilities began to dominate Lu’s artistic career.
35 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 97. 36 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 18-20. 37 Ibid., 225. 13
Chapter 2: State of the Field
2.1 Scholarly Writings in English
As a traditionalist painter active in the PRC, Lu Yanshao has recently begun to draw scholarly attention in the U.S. In her article “Traditional Painting in New China,” Julia
Andrews introduces Lu Yanshao as a traditionalist landscapist who received Western artistic training from an illustration class arranged by the Shanghai Municipal Cultural
Bureau and Shanghai branch of the All-China Art Workers Association.38 In Painters and
Politics in the People’s Republic of China: 1949-1979, Andrews discusses the artistic careers of three guohua painters, including Li Keran, Lu Yanshao and Wu Hufan.39 Lu
Yanshao’s Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems is examined in terms of Shitao’s influence and Lu’s own innovation in texture strokes. The author identifies the importance of this set of paintings by indicating that “this album is far superior in quality to known works of the 1940s and may offer evidence of his subsequent artistic development.”40
The discussion of Lu Yanshao’s art in Painters and Politics is important to the current study for two reasons. First, by associating Lu with two other prestigious artists,
38 Julia F. Andrews, “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 3 (1990): 559. 567. 39 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 297. 40 Ibid., 302. 14
Li Keran and Wu Hufan, Andrews raises Lu’s status in the art historical narrative.
Secondly, Painters and Politics introduces to Western viewers Lu’s Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, twenty-fives leaves of which will be analyzed in Chapter Four. In
A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China,
Julia Andrews and Kuiyi Shen discuss Lu Yanshao under the rubric of literati- expressionists. Considering Lu to have wasted the first decade after the founding of the
PRC, the authors mostly address Lu’s later landscapes, often comparing his mature style in the 1980s with his conservative style of the 1960s.41
Recent scholarship has thus laid a solid foundation for the current study and given rise to the question of what was the role of the 1950s in Lu’s entire artistic career.
Althought Lu Yanshao’s biography has been discussed in some English scholarly writings, there is not any English literature directly dealing with his painting. In contrast,
Chinese scholarship on Lu’s artwork has flourished. There are two kinds of Chinese literature on Lu Yanshao and his artwork: the artist’s own writings and secondary scholarship.
2.2 Scholarly Writings in Chinese
2.2.1 Lu Yanshao’s Own Writings
Lu Yanshao authored two major works regarding his life and art: Lu Yanshao’s
Autobiography (Lu Yanshao zixu 陸儼少自敍) and Discussion of Landscape Painting
41 Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen, “Chinese Painting in the Post-Mao Era,” in A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1998), 278-279. 15
(Shanshuihua chuyi 山水畫芻議).42 Lu’s autobiography records his artistic journey from his early years to 1984, and is significant because it not only records significant events in the artist’s life, but also reveals what the artist thought about these events.
In Lu Yanshao’s Autobiography, Lu describes the progression of his style: “Before the 1960s, my style was relatively careful and delicate 縝密娟秀, and its inspiration was obvious 靈氣外露. After the 1970s, the style became deep and confident 渾厚老辣, and reached a turning point 風格為之一變.”43 Lu’s periodization of his own style is important, because many art historians adopted this formula as a means of analysis. The current study argues, however, that contrary to Lu’s claim, in the late 1950s Lu already reached a turning point in his art and began to show his characteristic style.
Right before being hired by Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts as a graduate adviser in
August 1979, Lu Yanshao finished his book Discussion on Landscape Painting, written between February 1978 and July 1979.44 The book contains eighty-one short chapters that examine various facets of landscape painting. These subjects include the three traditional schools of painting,45 aesthetic standards for a good painting, prerequisites for creation, learning from tradition, studying from nature, subject matter, negative space, brush
42 These two texts are reprinted in Lu Yanshao lunyi (Lu Yanshao’s Writings on Art 陸儼 少論藝), ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010). 43 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 80. 44 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 239-241. 45 Dong Yuan-Juran tradition, Jing Hao-Guan Tong tradition, and Li Cheng-Guo Xi tradition. 16 strokes, tonality, blue and green painting, painting materials, the proper way to use the brush, and techniques to render natural phenomena.46
Lu’s opinions on landscape painting as presented in Discussion of Landscape
Painting are not only practical for students of landscape painting, but also useful for researchers studying the artist’s own artworks. In Discussion of Landscape Painting, Lu
Yanshao opines “To decide if a painting is good or not, we should look at its atmosphere
(qixiang 氣象), brushwork (bimo 筆墨) and spirit consonance (yunwei 韻味).” Wan
Qingli’s 萬青力 article “Lu Yanshao’s Art (Lu Yanshao de yishu jingjie 陸儼少的藝術
境界)” discusses Lu’s landscape painting from the three aspects mentioned above.47
Through his autobiography Lu Yanshao zixu, Lu formulates a narrative of his artistic career based purely on his landscapes. Figure painting is rarely mentioned. Although
Teaching Mama to Read is one of Lu’s best-known figure paintings, he only devoted one sentence to it in his Lu Yanshao zixu.
2.2.2 Secondary Scholarship in Chinese
Wan Qingli, Shu Shijun 舒士俊, and Shen Mingquan 沈明權 are Lu Yanshao’s students who have written scholarly publications on the art of their teacher. In addition to
“Lu Yanshao de yishu jingjie,” which analyzes Lu’s style from the perspectives of atmosphere, brushwork and spirit consonance, Wan Qingli discusses the relationship
46 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 99-148. 47 Wan Qingli, “Lu Yanshao de yishu jingjie,” Meishu yanjiu, no. 1 (1981): 4-7. 17 between the “Four Wangs” (Si Wang 四王)48 and Lu Yanshao in his article “The Ancient
Value in Painting: Style of Lu Yanshao’s Landscape Painting (Zuohua guiyou guyi: Lu
Yanshao shanshuihua fengge sanlun 作畫貴有古意——陸儼少山水畫風格散論) .” 49
According to Wan, because it was hard for Lu to see paintings of the Song and Yuan in his early years, the young artist first emulated works by the Four Wangs. Wan Qingli considers that while Lu Yanshao’s emulation of the Four Wangs was crucial to his formative training, Lu successfully went beyond the Four Wangs to Song and Yuan traditions, ultimately formulating his own unique style. Wan’s discussion of the relationship between Lu’s style and the Four Wangs is helpful and includes visual analysis of specific paintings.
Shu Shijun edited the book entitled Lu Yanshao lunyi (Lu Yanshao’s Writings on Art
陸儼少論藝), which consists of the two writings by Lu Yanshao mentioned in the previous section: Lu Yanshao’s Autobiography and Discussion of Landscape Painting.50
He also published a book entitled Lu Yanshao, which introduces Lu’s biography, landscape painting, and opinions on art. In the book’s appendix, a useful list of major events in Lu Yanshao’s life is laid out chronologically. Both Wan Qingli and Shu Shijun emphasize Lu Yanshao’s landscape painting. Shen Mingquan, in contrast, concentrates on Lu Yanshao’s figure painting in his publication Lu Yanshao’s figure painting (Lu
48 Four painters whose last name is Wang, including Wang Shimin (王時敏 1592-1680), Wang Jian (王鑒 1598-1677), Wang Yuanqi (王原祁 1615-1715), Wang Hui (王翚 1632-1717). 49 Wan Qingli, “Zuohua guiyou guyi----Lu Yanshao shanshuihua fengge sanlun,” Mingjia hanmo, vol. 17, 118-124. This article is also quoted in Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 179. 50 Lu Yanshao lunyi ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010). 18
Yanshao renwuhua 陸儼少人物畫), which provides primary material for Chapter Three of this thesis.
Lang Shaojun 郎紹君 also published two important articles discussing Lu
Yanshao’s painting. One is “Lu Yanshao’s Painting (Lu Yanshao de huihua 陸儼少的繪
畫),” and another is “Lu Yanshao’s Classical Training (Lu Yanshao de gudian xiuyang
陸儼少的古典修養).” In “Lu Yanshao’s Painting,” Lang Shaojun divides Lu Yanshao’s artistic life into three periods: from 1927 to 1950, from 1951 to 1974, and from 1975 to
1993.51 This article is extremely comprehensive; not only does Lang Shaojun discuss
Lu’s landscape painting, he also analyzes “new” subject matter in Lu’s paintings. The present thesis owes much to Lang Shaojun’s analysis. My discussion of the first fourteen leaves of the Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, for instance, is largely based on
Lang’s dating. Lang’s explanation of the reason Lu was so fascinated by creating paintings from poems is sketchy but inspirational. Indeed, Lang Shaojun points out that from 1950s to 1970s, poetry was ubiquitous in the political and cultural sphere because
Mao Zedong himself loved poetry. Lu Yanshao selected poems that were mostly relevant to landscape and were thus safe subjects in terms of ideology.52
Based on Lu Yanshao’s insciptions and autobiography, Lang Shaojun’s article “Lu
Yanshao’s Classical Training” details the relationship between Lu’s landscape painting and his classical training in poetry, essay-writing, and calligraphy. Lang considers that while Lu Yanshao was inclined to literati style, he also absorbed the academic style. This
51 Lang Shaojun, “Lu Yanshao de huihua,” Xin meishu, no. 4 (2008): 4-20. 52 Ibid., 9. 19 decision was based on the artist’s deep understanding of Chinese art history, especially the Four Wangs, and Shitao. Lang’s article will serve this thesis in Chapter Four, when I will analyze the relationship between painting and poetry in Lu’s artwork at various points throughout the 1950s. 53
How can we periodize Lu Yanshao’s art is an important question that has drawn attention from some of the scholars mentioned above. Based upon the artist’s description of his style before the 1960s and after the 1970s, Shu Shijun further divides Lu’s period into two phases: before 1962, and from 1962 to 1966.54 Lang Shaojun divides Lu’s styles into three periods: from 1927 to 1950, from 1951 to 1974, and from 1975 to 1993.55 The current thesis focuses on Lu’s art prior to the 1960s. This study moreover suggests that being condemned as a Rightist was a turning point in Lu’s artistic career, and marks the starting point of his mature phase.
53 Two Chinese MA theses and a dissertation have been completed on Lu Yanshao as of this writing. Liu Wenjie, “Hundred Years of Landscape Painting: A Comparison between Li Keran and Lu Yanshao 百年山水之窺：李可染、陸儼少比較” (PhD diss., Central Academy of Fine Arts, 2007); Song Pei, “A Study of Lu Yanshao’s Hundred-leaf Album after Du Fu 陸儼少《杜甫詩意百開巨冊》研究” (MA thesis, Nanjing Art Academy, 2007); Zhou Mei, “Learning from Nature----Lu Yanshao’s Painting 陸儼少‘師造化’ 淺談” (Central Academy of Fine Arts, 2008). 54 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 48-51. About the second phase of Lu’s style, the author’s original words are: “it started around 1960 and ended in 1966.” The language is actually slightly ambiguous, but this seems to be the meaning. 55 Lang Shaojun, “Lu Yanshao de huihua,” Xin meishu, no. 4 (2008): 4-20. 20
Chapter 3: Serve the Country: Lu Yanshao’s Figure Painting in the 1950s
Due to the Japanese invasion, Lu Yanshao and his family fled to Sichuan between
1937 and 1945. After the end of the war, Lu returned to his hometown in Nanxiang 南翔,
Jiangsu and prepared for a solo show, which eventually took place in nearby Wuxi 無錫 in 1948. In 1949, for the first time, Lu was exposed to the Communist guidelines that emphasized the role of people’s life in artistic creation based on Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature (1942).”56 In 1951, Lu moved to Shanghai and began to create lianhuanhua in order to earn a living. Between 1953 and 1955, Lu produced nearly ten lianhuanhua books. At the same time, Lu was also engaged in the
Shanghai National Guohua Research Association (Shanghai xin guohua yanjiu hui 上海
國畫研究會), and painted a series of new guohua,57 most of which are figure paintings.
In the hierarchy of Chinese painting in pre-modern times, the status of figure painting is significantly lower than that of landscape painting. Although Lu Yanshao did not consider lianhuanhua to be his specialty, Lu nevertheless had a unique attitude towards figure painting. An inscription in 1987 reveals this attitude:
I began to focus on Chinese landscape painting when I was young. From then on, I ignored figure painting. At the beginning of Liberation [1949], guohua
56 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 225. 57 For the definition of the term guohua, please refer to Julia F. Andrews, “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 3 (1990): 556-559. 21
[Chinese ink painting] lost its market. Forced by the need to make a living, I began to draw lianhuanhua, and paint small figures in the landscapes. Actually this experience was helpful. Artists in Tang and Song dynasty were good at painting both landscape and figures. Therefore, being able to paint both subjects well is necessary for a good artist. 予自弱冠專習國畫山水， 于人物一道，略不留意。解放初期，國畫失去市場，為生計所迫，改畫 連環畫，製作小人物于山水畫中，不無裨補。蓋自唐宋畫家，山水人物 類能兼擅，當行出色，因亦分內事也。58
With this attitude towards figure painting, Lu painted figure paintings on Chinese paper in the 1950s.
The 1950s was also a period during which debates over the reformation of guohua became heated. How artists should treat their cultural legacy, and how artists should conduct figure painting were two major topics. Ai Qing delivered “On Chinese Painting” in a session of the Shanghai Art Workers Political Study Group on March 27, 1953.59 In his talk, Ai Qing advocated the reformation of guohua and the creation of a new guohua
(new Chinese painting):
Only if we continue the most precious part of our national painting heritage and then create things with new contents and new forms can we call this completely new Chinese painting…In Chinese painting, the most acute problem is figure painting…Recent figure painting is appallingly decadent. Regardless of their clothing, gesture, face, or background, they haven’t an iota of the appearance of a real person in society.60
Several months after Ai Qing’s talk, the Chinese Artists Association acquired Lu
Yanshao’s painting Exploration in the Snowy Mountains. As Lu might have had some engagement with the Chinese Artists Association prior to this, the probability that he was
58 Lang Shaojun, “Lu Yanshao de huihua,” Xin meishu, no. 4 (2008): 12. 59 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 111. 60 Ibid., 115 22 aware of Ai Qing’s lecture was great. Lu’s figure paintings of the 1950s can thus partially be viewed as a response to the Party’s promotion of figure painting as delivered in Ai
Qing’s presentation. Lu first made a series of figure paintings by emulating ancient masterpieces. This shows Lu’s attitude toward preserving cultural legacy while simultaneously catering to Ai Qing’s recommendation that China’s national heritage be used to make new guohua. Lu also painted many new subjects, such as peasants working in the field and female literacy. These new figure types functioned as forms of propaganda.
Both types will be discussed in this chapter as I attempt to demonstrate how Lu
Yanshao adapted his skills to serve society, configuring figure paintings that reflected the
Party’s propagandistic agenda. Considering Lu’s early Confucian education, serving the country through painting will be shown to have been not simply a Communist pursuit, but also a Confucian one.
3.1 Lu Yanshao’s Traditionalist Figure Painting
During the 1950s, Lu Yanshao created a series of traditionalist figure painting by imitating masterpieces such as Zhou Fang’s (周昉 8th century-9th century) Palace
Ladies Playing Double Sixes (內人雙陸圖 [Figure 10]), Gu Hongzhong’s (顧閎中 910? -
980?) Night Revels of Han Xizai (韓熙載夜宴圖 [Figure 11]), Li Gonglin’s (李公麟
1049-1106) Tao Yuanming Returning to Seclusion (陶淵明歸隱圖 [Figure 12]), Tang
Yin’s (唐寅 1470-1523) Dongfang Shuo (東方朔 [Figure 13]), Chen Hongshou’s (陳洪
23
綬 1598-1652) Elegant Gathering (雅集圖 [Figure 14]), Lady in Autumn (眷秋圖 [Figure
15]) and Du Fu (杜甫 [Figure 16]).61
Most of Lu Yanshao’s imitations were painted in 1956 and 1957, and were stamped with the seal “adapting to the new” (jiuxin 就新), indicating that Lu hoped to cater to society’s new needs through the recreation of ancient masterpieces. And yet, how can these traditionalist figure paintings that preserve old subject matter, composition and brushwork “adapt to the new?” Since the subject matter of these figure paintings by Lu is not new, the only way of “adapting to the new” in these paintings is to practice and preserve brushwork and compositions of ancient masterpieces and use them to create new
Chinese paintings, as Ai Qing stated in 1953.
3.2 Lu Yanshao’s “New” Figure Painting
3.2.1 Teaching Mama to Read
One of Lu Yanshao’s representative “new” figure paintings is Teaching Mama to
Read [Figure 9]. In the winter of 1955, Lu Yanshao was appointed the director of an art school in Hefei.62 Teaching Mama to Read was painted while he was in residence in 1956
61 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan (Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003). The sources for these images were undoubtedly reproduction albums, since some of the originals were abroad, but this issue requires further research. Palace Ladies Playing Double Sixes became part of the collection of Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 1939, and Tao Yuanming Returning to Seclusion have been in Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC since 1919; Night Revels of Han Xizai attributed to Gu Hongzhong is in the Palace Museum, Beijing; Dongfang Shuo by Tang Yin and Elegant Gathering by Chen Hongshou are in the Shanghai Museum collection; and Lady in Autumn in an American private collection. 62 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 55. Lu Yanshao, Kong Xiaoyu 孔小瑜, Xu Zihe Zihe 徐子鶴, and Song Wenzhi 宋文治 were hired to work in Hefei. Later in 1956, Lu Yanshao was 24 and was exhibited in the Second National Guohua Exhibition.63 Even more importantly,
Teaching Mama to Read was published as the cover of the July issue of Meishu in
1956.64 Since the institutions supporting Meishu were the Chinese Artists Association and the Propaganda Ministry of the Communist Party Central Committee, being publishing in
Meishu is equivalent to being canonized.
Meishu and Chinese Artists Association
Meishu was the most important art magazine in the People’s Republic of China before the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It began as a bimonthly art magazine called
Renmin meishu in February 1950, but was renamed Meishu in 1954 and was then issued monthly. This renaming occurred when the magazine’s supporting institution, the All-
China Art Workers Association, was renamed the Chinese Artists Association in October
1953. From 1961 to 1966, Meishu was again published on a bimonthly basis. Due to the
Cultural Revolution, production was halted for a period of ten years. At the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, publication of Meishu resumed, and soon it regained its status as the official magazine of Chinese Artists Association, which was reestablished in
August 1978.
invited by Wu Hufan and Liu Haisu to stay in Shanghai and work for the Shanghai Guohua Institute. Therefore Lu did not return to Hefei any more. 63 The Second National Guohua Exhibition was sponsored by the Culture Bureau and the Chinese Artists Association. The exhibition was held between July 8 and July 18, 1956 in the Gallery of the Chinese Artists Association in Beijing. Later an exhibition was held in August 1956 in Shanghai. For more information please refer to Yu, “The Second National Guohua Exhibition has been Open,” Meishu, vol. 7 (1956), 52. 64 Thanks to the publication on the cover of Meishu, even though little attention has been paid to Lu Yanshao’s figure paintings, Teaching Mama to Read is always referred in scholarship relevant to Lu Yanshao. 25
On 19 July 1949, the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (Zhongguo wenxue yishu jie lianhehui 中國文學藝術界聯合會) was established. Two days later, the
All-China Art Workers Association was founded in Beijing.65 The All-China Art
Workers Association, later called the Chinese Artists Association, was a part of the China
Federation of Literary and Art Circles, which was under the direct control of the
Propaganda Ministry of the Communist Party Central Committee. The All-China Art
Workers Association (Chinese Artists Association) was supported primarily by the government; its reliance on membership fees was minimal.66 Its Secretariat was in charge of four sections: the editorial section, the exhibition section, the membership section, and the foreign affairs section. Meishu was controlled by the editorial section.67
The Chinese Artists Association is a hierarchical organization, which means that it had different levels, including national, provincial and municipal. From the “Zhongguo meishujia xiehui zhangcheng” (“Principles of the Chinese Artists Association”), we know that members of the Chinese Artists Association who lived outside of Beijing also attended local artist associations.68 Through this network, policies issued by the
Propaganda Ministry of the Communist Party Central Committee were effectively
65 Chen Lüsheng, Xinzhongguo meishu tushi: 1949-1966 (Beijing: Chinese Youth Press,
2000), 361-362.
66 Meishu, “Zhongguo meishujia xiehui zhangcheng,” February 1954. 67 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 6. I get this information from a chart in Professor Andrews’ book. It is important to know that when describing the chart on page 5, she says “Chart I lists the most important parts of the bureaucracy during the period 1949-1979. Some intermediate levels of authority have been omitted; moreover, our diagram may not be accurate in all details for all periods.” 68 Meishu, “Zhongguo meishujia xiehui zhangcheng,” February 1954. 26 disseminated from the Chinese Artists Association in Beijing to local artists. Reporting on the activities of both the Chinese Artists Association and local associations constitutes a central role of Meishu.
Although Lu Yanshao was not elected to be a standing committee member of the
Chinese Artists Association until as late as 1979, his engagement with both the Artists
Association of Eastern China and the Chinese Artists Association started early on. As we have seen in 1953, Lu Yanshao’s Exploration in the Snowy Mountains was collected by
Chinese Artists Association. A year later, Lu met with Huang Binhong (黃賓虹 1865-
1955) at the Artists Association of Eastern China.69 It is certain that Lu was a member of the Shanghai Artists Association in 1957. One of the reasons70 Lu was labeled a Rightist, in fact, was related to his negative evaluation of the association during a meeting held that same year: “There is not even one ink painting hanging on the wall of Shanghai
Artists Association. It looks like an Artists Association of foreign countries.”71
Since Lu Yanshao was engaged in the Artists Association system very early in the
1950s, the artist would have been familiar with the subject matter and styles patronized by the group and therefore would have created his submission for the Second National
Guohua Exhibition in 1956 with these in mind.
The Second National Guohua Exhibition
69 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 227. 70 Another explanation of Lu being declared a Rightist exists. Based on interviews with relevant figures, Lu “was given a position at the Shanghai Institute of Chinese Painting when it was organized in 1956. Because he bargained for a higher living stipend than he was originally offered, he was declared a Rightist in 1957 and demoted to a menial library job.” See Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 302. 71 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 16. 27
In discussing the Second National Guohua Exhibition, the Hundred Flowers
Campaign must first be introduced. In May of 1956, Mao Zedong declared, “Let a
Hundred Flowers Bloom, a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend.”72 Although the reasons leading up to this campaign are interpreted in diverse ways,73 on the positive side we can see that this movement infused the art world with fresh air. Lu Dingyi (陸定一
1906-1996), who headed the Propaganda Ministry of the Communist Party between
1954 and 1966, had a talk on May 26 “played down socialist realism, spoke out strongly in favor of indigenous and national art forms, and warned against overreliance on the
Soviet Union.”74 Chinese ink painting again became of central importance. According to
Ellen Johnston Laing, “Zhou Enlai’s call for better treatment of intellectuals on a professional basis and the repeated emphasis on fostering traditional arts affected artists in very practical ways.”75 Within this historic context, the Second National Guohua
Exhibition, held from July 8 to July 18 1956, played a meaningful role in the development of Chinese ink painting.
In response to the Second National Guohua Exhibition, Meishu published a series of review articles, which well explain the reasons why Lu Yanshao’s Teaching Mama to
Read was preferred and selected to be the cover of this important issue of Meishu. Hu
72 Ellen Johnston Laing, The Winking Owl: Art in the People’s Republic of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 23. 73 Ellen Johnston Laing summarizes three reasons for this campaign. First, it is the outcome of the increasing demand of filling the gap between the bureaucracy and the masses. Second, the country needed the wisdom of intellectuals to construct the country. Finally, it might be a trap for those disloyal intellectuals. Ibid., 27. 74 Ibid., 23. 75 Ibid., 25. 28
Peiheng (胡佩衡 1892-1965), one of the evaluators, records his own experience of the exhibition:
From the overall quality of this exhibition, it is clear that we have already made great progress compared to the First National Guohua Exhibition.76 Our artists have learned from life to a deeper degree. Many paintings reflect the new life very well, and the subject matter is more diverse. I am happy to see that our socialist realist ink paintings become more and more substantial. However, defects do exist, and the most obvious one is that many paintings neglect the tradition from our existing heritage of ink painting.77
Hu’s evaluation reveals that his primary criterion was how an artist drew upon new
Socialist lifestyles as well as tradition. This standard was not created by Hu himself, but derives from Mao’s 1942 Yan’an Forum statement, “The life of the people is always a mine of the raw materials for literature and art, materials in their natural form, materials that are crude, but most vital, rich and fundamental; …they provide literature and art with an inexhaustible source, their only source.”78 Hu’s criterion also corresponds with the
Hundred Flowers Campaign, which placed more attention on the conventions of Chinese art.
Hu classified paintings into four classes. Those which successfully harmonized contemporary life with tradition were ranked first.79 In addition to the fact that Teaching
76 The First National Guohua Exhibition was held by the Art Workers Association during the September 1953 in Beijing. Ellen Johnston Laing, The Winking Owl: Art in the People’s Republic of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 22. Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 161. 77 Hu Peiheng, “Dierjie quanguo guohuazhan pingxuan gongzuozhong de ganxiang,” Meishu, no. 7 (1956): 9. 78 Mao Zedong, Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1971), 265. 79 Hu Peiheng, “Dierjie quanguo guohuazhan pingxuan gongzuozhong de ganxiang,” Meishu, no. 7 (1956): 9. 29
Mama to Read was published in Meishu, as far as I am concerned, the successful combination of life and artistic tradition makes it deserve to be classified to the first class.
Lu Yanshao became a member of Shanghai National Guohua Research Association
(Shanghai xin guohua yanjiuhui 上海新國畫研究會) in 1952. Julia F. Andrews describes the goal of the Association as follows: “According to Jiang Feng, speaking in the fall of
1953, Shanghai and Beijing National Guohua Research Association were founded ‘after liberation...[so that guohua would] be improved by proceeding from reality…[and] by describing real people and events.’”80 As a member of Shanghai National Guohua
Research Association, Lu Yanshao created some new guohua and new nianhua (new year painting), both of which emphasize everyday life.81
Teaching Mama to Read [Figure 9], a prime example of Lu Yanshao’s new guohua, captures a charming scene of everyday life. Leaning over the table, a young girl teaches her mother how to decipher the characters in a book. Meanwhile, the youngest daughter is perched on her mother’s lap, pointing at a red snail and smiling sweetly. In the yard, two chickens are depicted idly pecking at the soil. It is an endearing vignette of village life. This scene moreover reveals a popular Communist subject of female literacy, which
I will discuss later.
The sense of transience that permeates the painting derives from Lu Yanshao’s solid training in Chinese ink painting. In the foreground, Lu uses soft ink lines to depict the soothing water ripples of a nearby stream. This technique can be observed in many of his
80 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 73-74. 81 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 227. 30 landscapes [Figure 33]. The plants growing near the edge of the water are delicately rendered, giving the effect of blowing in the breeze. The large tree spanning the right side of the composition is rendered in bolder tones, and its diagonal line, combined with the pond in the lower corner, add stability to the image. The boughs of the tree arch over the small family, creating a shelter. The roughness of the ink strokes successfully creates a sense of friction between leaves, thereby conveying the auditory illusion of wind passing through the branches. Through his mastery of traditional vocabularies of ink painting, Lu
Yanshao thus demonstrates a balance between dynamism and stability.
This painting effectively draws together Communist subject matter and Chinese ink painting. Viewers of the Second National Guohua Exhibition published their opinions in the eighth issue of Meishu in 1956. One comment states: “Paintings such as Teaching
Mama to Read naturally reflect reality through guohua techniques.”82 The teaching scene is pushed back and is relatively small. Mother and daughters are surrounded by natural setting, in which the tree is emphasized. Traditionally, the space under a tree is occupied by a scholar.83 In Lu Yanshao’s Teaching Mama to Read and other paintings that are related to women’s literacy [Figure 17, 18, 19], however, the space under a tree becomes a place for teaching and learning.
82 Kai Xiang, ed., “Guanzhong dui dierjie quanguo guohua zhanlanhui zhanpin de yijian,” Meishu, no. 8 (1956): 9. 83 Cahill points out: “The composite motif man-under-tree had been, almost from the beginnings of Chinese painting, the smallest unit signifying man-in-nature, it is from such units that landscape evolved.” See James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 110. 31
Meishu also collected the responses of regular viewers. The audience held two different opinions about the adoption of Western techniques into Chinese painting. One side maintained that “some artists properly adopt Western techniques of painting, and make the content of the painting substantial. This kind of painting is liked by everyone, because it depicts real life and makes people feel happy.”84 The other side, in contrast, disliked the integration of Western technique into Chinese painting because “it looks so similar to Western art that it eliminates features of Chinese ink painting.”85
Adoption of Western technique was also a topic debated during the Yan’an Forum.
According to Jerome Silbergeld, “Mao had no option but once again to avoid exclusion and to accept cautiously the possibility of influence from both sources.”86 But Mao did not provide a definitive answer as to how the Chinese artist should adopt influences from the Western tradition. Teaching Mama to Read [Figure 9] represents an attempt at figuring out this question. Indeed, Lu Yanshao demonstrates a harmonious combination of Western techniques and Chinese ink painting tradition.
Lu acquired knowledge of techniques of Western art in a lianhuanhua class in 1951.
At the beginning of the 1950s, “the welfare of guohua artists in Shanghai was a particularly acute problem because of their large numbers.”87 Lu Yanshao was one of these traditionalist artists struggling to earn a living in Shanghai. Based on China
84 Kai Xiang, ed., “Guanzhong dui dierjie quanguo guohua zhanlanhui zhanpin de yijian,” Meishu, no. 8 (1956): 10. 85 Ibid., 10. 86 Jerome Silbergeld and Gong Jisui, Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 8. 87 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 75. 32
Reconstructs’ summary of the new art in 1951, “an artist would be significantly more likely to attain recognition off his or her work if it depicts the prescribed themes in one of three media: nianhua, woodcuts, or lianhuanhua.”88 Within this desperate situation, Lu
Yanshao turned to creating lianhuanhua in order to earn a living and build himself a reputation. Roughly at the same time in 1951, “the Shanghai Municipal Cultural Bureau and Shanghai branch of the AWA (Art Workers Association) conducted special serial picture study classes with the aim of reforming, regularizing, and raising standards of lianhuanhua production.”89 Lu Yanshao attended the class, whereby he gained knowledge of how to paint lianhuanhua.90 After graduation, Lu was assigned to a private press called Tongkang shuju, but the press, unfortunately, was badly managed.91
Although the lianhuanhua training class did not guarantee a stable income, it did teach
Lu techniques in Western art that can be observed in Teaching Mama to Read [Figure 9].
More specifically, Western perspective is adopted in the depiction of the chair, desk, and small box beside the broom. These objects are rendered in thin black outlines that converge to an invisible vanishing point. The houses moreover exemplify the techniques
Lu had learned during his lianhuanhua class. The door of the main house is slightly open, causing a slight recession into space. The pale ink wash that shades the side of the smaller house further creates a sense of volume. Arranging different props, such as the
88 Ibid., 74. 89 Ibid., 71. 90 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 54. 91 Dong Yeshan, Lu Yanshao (Hangzhou: Xiling yinshe chubanshe, 2009), 26.
33 basket, root, gourd frame etc., to create a sense of space is a technique that can be seen in many lianhuanhua. The spatial recession is moreover conveyed through the diagonal composition formed by the pond in the foreground and tree trunk in the middle ground.
By combining the techniques of Western art that Lu Yanshao had learned in the lianhuanhua class along with more traditional vocabularies of Chinese art, Teaching
Mama to Read can be viewed as Lu Yanshao’s answer to the question “To what degree should artists adopt Western art technique in this new situation?”
Female Literacy
Two factors that contribute to the canonization of Lu Yanshao’s new figure painting
Teaching Mama to Read have been discussed thus far. First, the artist successfully merges life and artistic tradition. Second, both Chinese and Western artistic vocabularies were integrated. Although the combination is quite successful, the division between “new” figures and landscape setting is discernible in the composition. The subject matter of the painting also reveals how Lu utilized his painting to serve the country. Through painting,
Lu Yanshao tried to express the new subject of female literacy in a delicate but revolutionary way.
By the time the PRC was established in 1949, among 550 million Chinese people, at least 290 million were illiterate.92 Nearly 95 percent of the people living in the
92 Statistics show that in 1950, 58.70% people in Guangdong townships were illiterate. If this percentage is applied to the whole country’s 550 million people, 322 million were illiterate. Glen Peterson, The Power of Words: Literacy and Revolution in South China, 1949-95 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 49. 34 countryside are illiterate.93 Indeed, by 1949, “90 percent of females in China still remained illiterate,”94 and astonishingly nearly 100 percent of women in the countryside were illiterate.95
The Communist Party had made some progress in the education of both sexes even before 1949. In 1942, the revolutionary print maker Jiang Feng created a woodblock print Studying Is Good (Nianshu hao 念書好 [Figure 20],) which depicts a boy and a girl walking together on their way to school. The slogan above the children reads, “Studying is good. After you study, you can do accounts and write letters.”96 This print advocates that studying is commendable for both boys and girls, and thus represents the Communist
Party’s concerns for equal rights in women’s education. In the image, the girl raises an abacus, while the boy holds a brush and paper. This arrangement is interesting, because it could unconsciously indicate that although women have the right to be educated, their instruction should aim at taking care of the family budget. The power of writing remains in the hands of men.
According to Jane Liu and Marilyn Carpenter, “The Chinese Communist Party government implemented a gender equality policy from its beginning in
1949…Reinforcing Marxist and Leninist ideology, Mao Zedong… [issued the slogan]
93 Ma Yun, “A Study on Anti-illiteracy Education in People’s Republic of China” (PhD diss., Huadong Shifan University, 2006), 10. 94 Jane Liu and Marilyn Carpenter, “Trends and Issues of Women’s Education in China,” The Clearing House 78, no. 6 (2005): 279. 95 Ma Yun, “A Study on Anti-illiteracy Education in People’s Republic of China” (PhD diss., Huadong Shifan University, 2006), 57. 96 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 19. 35
Women can hold up half the sky.’ It soon became a popular political slogan.”97 In
December 1949, the government moreover issued a decree to promote winter study
(dongxue 冬學) programs. In 1951, the government launched a nation-wide literacy movement (shizi yundong 識字運動), that particularly targeted the countryside.98 Tang
Wenxuan’s 湯文選 1954 Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-law on Their Way to Winter
Study (Poxi shang dongxue 婆媳上冬學 [Figure 21]) promoted the former. Lu Yanshao’s
Teaching Mama to Read pertains to the latter.
Women, as an indispensable part of the countryside, were required to participate in the literacy movement. Although some female villagers were enthusiastic about learning
Chinese characters, most of them were more concerned with housework. Indeed, lack of enthusiasm was a serious problem in the 1950s. Nonetheless, all women were required to attend shizi classes, however reluctant they might have felt.99
The shizi program inspired a series of related texts,100 some of which even got their content from popular dramas.101 In literature and art, representations advocating shizi also appeared. Zhang Zhixiang 張致祥, a Communist who was in charge of the celebration of the founding of the nation, wrote a story called “Teaching Mama to Read.”102 Zhang
Zhixiang’s story was distributed in the Shanxi Daily on June 1, 1956. Although published
97 Jane Liu and Marilyn Carpenter, “Trends and Issues of Women’s Education in China,” The Clearing House 78, no. 6 (2005): 279. 98 Ma Yun, “A Study on Anti-illiteracy Education in People’s Republic of China” (PhD diss., Huadong Shifan University, 2006), 16. 99 Ibid., 178. 100 For details please refer to Ibid., 98. 101 For details please refer to Ibid., 51. 102 Ibid. 174. For details of the novel please refer to Zhang Zhixiang, “Jiao mama shi zi,” Shanxi Daily, June 1, 1956, sec. III. 36 three months later than Lu Yanshao’s painting, Zhang’s story reveals the importance of the literacy movement in 1956 and explains why Lu Yanshao may have selected the topic of female literacy. Here is a paragraph from Zhang Zhixiang’s story, written in the voice of a young girl:
I began to be a little teacher last October. At first, Mom felt reluctant to learn, because she said she did not have a good memory and encountered a lot of difficulties. I tried to persuade her time and time again, and told her the benefits of knowing characters (shizi). Moreover, I told her that “Our great Chairman Mao requested everybody to learn characters, and we must follow his words.” Mom respects Chairman Mao very much. Once she knew that Chairman Mao asked us to learn, Mom was no longer against learning and began studying characters happily.
This extract recognizes the reluctance of some women to learn Chinese characters and attempts to encourage them with the words of Chairman Mao.
Lu Yanshao’s Teaching Mama to Read [Figure 9], similarly encourages female literacy, though in a more subtle manner. The Spring Festival couplet on the door says,
“Spring breeze blows green willow, …red flag 春風吹綠柳，⋯⋯紅旗.” The “spring breeze” is represented in the painting through the movement in the plants and trees, and creates a comfortable environment for learning. The word “spring” indicates that the new developments are not just possible but inevitable. “Green” resonates with the hues coloring the bamboo, gourd leaves and small plants. The “red flag” is represented simply by the characters inscribed on the door. As a traditionalist landscape painter, Lu Yanshao did not address political symbols directly. Lu selects a single couplet to indicate the invisible but ubiquitous “red flag” behind this harmonious scene of teaching and learning between daughter and mother.
37
This delicate yet revolutionary mode of of depicting Communist subject will be further analyzed by comparing Lu’s Teaching Mama to Read with Jiang Yan’s (姜燕
1919-1958) Testing Mom (Kaokao mama 考考媽媽 [Figure 22]), painted in 1953.
Testing Mom and Teaching Mama to Read
The most obvious difference between Jiang Yan’s Testing Mom [Figure 22] and Lu
Yanshao’s Teaching Mama to Read [Figure 9] is that Jiang Yan’s figures are inside the house, while Lu Yanshao’s figures are outside. This distinction is critical for two reasons.
First, because Jiang Yan’s figures are positioned within the house, the figures are clearly the artist’s focus. We can see the sweet facial expression and interaction between mother and daughter as they study. In contrast, Lu Yanshao depicts his subjects within a natural setting and pushes them to the middle ground. This design not only minimizes any flaws in figure-drawing,103 but also allows Lu to dabble in his field of specialization— landscape.
Secondly, according to Confucian tradition, women were instructed to stay at home and take care of their children. In Jiang Yan’s painting, although the mother is studying, she is also breastfeeding her son. The mother in Lu Yanshao’s painting sits outside the house, studying in a natural environment. In Lu’s painting, the woman’s presence outside the home is thus symbolic of women taking a larger role in society at large.104
103 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 166. 104 Scholarly writings on artistic representation of feminist movement often use Jiang’s Testing Mama as an example. For instance, Yang Jian 楊建, “Xin Zhongguo shiqinian meishu zhong de nüxing xingxiang,” (Master Thesis, Hunan Normal University, 2006), 16, 28 and Zheng Liyan 鄭麗岩, “Xin Zhongguo chuqi nüxing huihua yishu tanxi,” 38
Another clear difference between the two paintings is that the mother in Jiang’s painting cradles a son while the mother in Lu’s painting holds a daughter. Although feminist interpretations of this painting have yielded fruitful results, I will here posit them within a context of regional style.
Different regional styles are immediately apparent in the artists’ use of color palettes. Aside from monochromatic black ink, Lu Yanshao applies green, brown and a little red. These colors together render a lyrical scene typical of Southern China. Jiang
Yan, conversely, utilizes brighter and more numerous colors. Red, green and dark yellow generate a sense of Northern China. Different architectural styles also betray different regional influence. The type of bed depicted in Jiang’s painting, a kang, only appears in
Northern China. The white wall and black tiled roof of Lu’s painting, however, intimates the lyrical atmosphere of Southern China. The artist’s detailed rendering of Southern
China, where he was raised, demonstrates his observation of real life—a new guideline promoted by the Party.
3.2.2 New Figures in Traditionalist Landscape
Teaching Mama to Read is not the only extant example of Lu’s new figure painting.
Other examples include: Diligent People in Spring Morning (Renqin chunzao 人勤春早
[figure 23]) from 1963, People Start to Leave the Mountain Market (Shanshi ren chusan
山市人初散 [figure 24, 25]) from 1964, and Fish Harvesting in Xin’anjiang Reservoir
Dazhong wenyi, no. 6 (2010), 111. But Lu Yanshao’s Teaching Mama to Read was rarely mentioned. One reason I speculate is that Jiang Yan is a female artist, and naturally to be considered as a part of the feminist movement. Another possible reason is that Lu Yanshao’s emphasis on depicting the environment makes his painting less feminist, because in the history of Chinese painting, landscape painters were usually men. 39
(Xin’anjiang shuiku yuye fengshou 新安江水庫漁業豐收 [figure 26]) from 1965. When compared with Teaching Mama to Read, these new figure paintings from the 1960s are less compelling and reveal less commitment. This indicates that Lu’s main focus had already shifted to landscape painting in the 1960s.
In the paintings mentioned above, farmers and villagers populate the foreground.
The background consists of mountains or more lyrical landscapes. In Diligent People in
Spring Morning, farmers are depicted working in the fields [figure 23]. Their gestures are rigid, as if they were posing rather than spontaneously moving. The upper half of this painting is a lyrical scene, which resembles the fifth leaf in Hundred-Leaf Album after Du
Fu’s Poems [figure 32]. In both the fifth leaf and Diligent People in Spring Morning, trees surround a house, and negative space is used to insinuate the presence of mist and water. In Diligent People in Spring Morning the Communist subject matter is not as well integrated with the landscape setting as in Teaching Mama to Read. Returning to the metaphor at the heart of this thesis, these lower-quality figure paintings suggest that the
Confucian and Communist strands that together composed Lu Yanshao’s artistic career had already begun to unravel in the years following 1957. From within a position of adversity, Lu pursued his Confucian inclination and entered his mature phase by returning to his love of landscape painting, a topic that I will discuss in the following chapter.
40
Chapter 4: Lu Yanshao’s Landscape Paintings After Du Fu’s Poems in the 1950s
As shown in Chapter Three, Lu Yanshao tried to contribute to the rebuilding of the country with his new figure paintings in the 1950s. His effort is epitomized in his 1956 painting Teaching Mama to Read. Only one year later, Lu was condemned as a Rightist and forced to perform manual labor until 1961.105 It was in 1959, after being labeled a
Rightist, that Lu shifted his focus back to his own artistic interest and developed a mature phase of landscape painting. In this chapter, I will first introduce Lu’s traditional training in “the three perfections” and his favorite poet Du Fu. Based on this background information, I will compare three groups of paintings illustrating Du Fu’s poetry created by Lu in 1950, 1956 and 1959. Psychologically, the connections between Lu Yanshao’s paintings and Du Fu’s poems became increasingly complicated. Lu’s return to this authentic form of self-expression while removed from good government standing, a common experience of premodern Confucian officials, can be viewed as an ethical response that follows the Confucian teaching “If poor, they [“men of antiquity”] attended to their own virtue in solitude.”106
4.1 Lu Yanshao’s Early Training in Poetry, Painting and Calligraphy
105 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 228-231. 106 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 453. 41
Before discussing Lu Yanshao’s landscape painting after Du Fu, a brief introduction to the artist’s traditional training is in order. Lu Yanshao was born in Jiading, a county in
Jiangsu Province, near Shanghai. Lu’s father was a rice merchant, but had a good knowledge of literature and was a skilled calligrapher.107
Lu himself became interested in drawing as early as the age of seven. When he was thirteen, he started studying painting by emulating The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of
Painting (Jieziyuan huapu 芥子園畫譜) given to him by a neighbor, and Album of
Famous Chinese Paintings (Zhongguo minghua ji 中國名畫集) in the Chengzhong
Middle School library. During this period, Lu also tried to make seals and write calligraphy. Lu’s father discouraged him from studying painting before learning the classics. And so, Lu also read the Analects by Confucius and the History of the Former
Han Dynasty by Ban Gu.108
After graduating from middle school in 1926, Lu went to Wuxi Art Academy (Wuxi meizhuan 無錫美專) to study ink painting for half a year.109 Around this period, Lu
107 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 15-16. 108 Ibid., 18-20. Analects is the foundational classic of Confucianism. The ideology lying behind History of the Former Han Dynasty is also Confucianism. In Lu Yanshao’s early education, Confucianism played an important role, which is also influential in his later years. For example, Lu Yanshao’s favorite poet Du Fu has many poems that reflect the ideology of Confucianism. For more details about History of the Former Han Dynasty, see Liang Zonghua, “Ban Gu de ruxue guan dui Hanshu de yingxiang yu zhiyue” in Hanshu yanjiu, ed. Chen Qitai and Zhang Aifang (Beijing: Zhongguo da baikequanshu chubanshe, 2009), 366-378. For more information about Du Fu and Confucianism, please see Feng Jianguo, “Dufu shige dui rujia sixiang hexin – ‘ren’ de jingdian quanshi,” Shandong daxue xuebao, no. 4, 2007. 109 Lu Yanshao mentioned that in 1926 Wuxi Art Academy had painters such as Hu Tinglu 胡汀鷺, Zhu Jianqiu 諸健秋, Wang Yunxuan 王雲軒, and Chen Jiucun 陳舊村 42
Yanshao was introduced to Qing-dynasty Hanlin scholar Wang Tongyu, who lent Lu paintings from his collection and taught the young man how to read the classics and write poetry. Wang also introduced Lu to painting master Feng Chaoran and his circle of intellectuals.110
Lu’s study with Wang Tongyu and Feng Chaoran was interrupted by the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1932. Although Lu’s study with Wang Tongyu ceased that same year, the older scholar had a deep influence on the young artist. Wang’s introduction to
Feng Chaoran marked an important starting point for Lu’s artistic life. As a Qing-dynasty scholar, Wang was an exemplar of the traditional literatus, and he not only gave Lu a sense of what a literati artist should be, but also furthered his interest in poetry and classics. It was under Wang’s instruction that Lu finished reading all Du Fu’s poems and formed his “Four Three Three” theory of how to use time to study.111
Before fleeing from the Japanese invasion to Sichuan in 1938, Lu’s continued his training in painting by travelling and attending art shows. In the spring of 1934, Lu travelled to Zhejiang and Anhui province. In his autobiography, Lu recollects that Mt. on staff. But Lu also said “The war between warlards broke out, and I went back home from school early. Because I was a little disappointed by the level of the teachers in Wuxi Art Academy, I did not go to school any more. Instead, I began to search for top painters to be my teacher.” Therefore Lu turned to ask Wang Tongyu to be his teacher. For details please refer to Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 21. 110 Information in this paragraph comes from Lu Yanshao’s autobiography. For details please refer to Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 15-27. 111 Lu Yanshao mentioned this in his essays on art: “I have a proportion about how to use time to study: forty percent should be devoted to reading books, thirty percent should be spent on calligraphy, and another thirty percent should be used to paint.” For details please refer to Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 26. 43
Huang left a deep impression on him as looking very similar to paintings by the seventeenth-century individualist Shitao,112 who painted a handscroll of Landscape of
Mount Huang in 1699 for a wealthy Huizhou (near Mt. Huang) merchant living near
Yangzhou.113
Since the northeast of China was occupied by the Japanese in 1931, Lu Yanshao’s friend suggested a trip to northern China, indicating that later they probably would have no chance to visit the north because of the Japanese threat. In May 1934, Lu started travelling with his friend. They travelled to Xuzhou, Qufu, Tai’an, and went to Mt. Tai to see the sunset and sunrise.114 They went on to Ji’nan, Tianjin, Beiping (Beijing) and
Datong. After viewing the Yungang Caves in Datong, Lu and his friend returned to
Beiping. They returned to Shanghai via Tianjin, Yantai and Weihaiwei. During this fifty- day trip, Lu saw different types of rocks and mountains, and this experience helped him understand traditional texture strokes, compositions, and the basic vocabulary of Chinese ink painting.115
112 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 29. 113 Jonathan Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31. 114 Qufu is located in Shandong province, and it is the hometown of Confucius. Tai’an and Mt. Tai are also in Shandong province. The name of Tai’an means prosperous and peaceful, and it indicates a short form of the phrase guotai mi’an, which means “the country prospers, and the people at peace.” Mt. Tai has a great cultural reputation, and one reason is that it was a site for important emperors to worship (fengshan 封禪) the heaven and earth (tiandi 天地). All of Qufu, Tai’an and Mt. Tai have a patriotic connotation that is aware by every literary Chinese, of course including Lu Yanshao and his friend, who intentionally chose these places to visit after the Japanese invasion in 1931. 115 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 31-32. 44
In 1937, the Second National Art Exhibition 第二届全國美展 was held in Nanjing under the sponsorship of the Nationalist Ministry of Education.116 Lu Yanshao attended the exhibition and saw famous paintings by Fan Kuan, Dong Yuan, Li Tang, Guo Xi, and
Huang Gongwang. The experience was extremely meaningful to Lu Yanshao. He later wrote: “Now I am seventy years old. I still owe a lot to having seen great Song and Yuan paintings in the exhibitions before 1949.”117
Reading Confucian classics and poems, studying with prestigious artists and scholars, travelling and viewing great art are all parts of traditional training in painting.
This training laid a solid foundation for Lu’s great accomplishments in ink painting, such as the series after Du Fu.
4.2 Du Fu
Du Fu was one of the greatest Tang dynasty poets, and he was later honored as the
“Poet Sage” (shisheng 詩聖). As a grandson of a high official at the Tang court, Du Fu witnessed the decline of the Tang dynasty. Following the Confucian teaching “when a student finds that he can more than cope with his studies, then he takes office 學而優則
仕,”118 Du Fu became an official. His career, however, did not go well. Because of the
116 Julia F. Andrews, “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 3 (1990): 556. The First National Art Exhibition was also sponsored by the Ministry of Education, and it was held in April 1929 at the New hall of General Cultivation in Shanghai. See Tang Xiaobing, Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 89. 117 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 32-33. 118 Confucius, The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), 155. Other standard English translations see Confucius, The Analects of Confucius, trans. 45
An Lushan Rebellion (755-762 安史之亂) in the year 759, Du was forced to give up his official position and flee through Gansu province to Chengdu in Sichuan province. Du Fu wrote many poems expressing his melancholy through the imagery of Sichuan.
According to Alfreda Murck, Du Fu’s poems, “by turns angry and melancholy—were a particularly rich source for painters who wanted to express indirect complaint.”119 Du
Fu’s poems thus provided inexhaustible materials for painters to convey such feelings.
For artists such as Lu Yanshao, expressing one’s melancholy through Du Fu’s poetry in the 1950s was relatively safe. An article Liang Qichao 梁啟超 published in
1922 states “Du Fu’s loyalty to the emperor and patriotism have been praised by our predecessors.”120 Du Fu had therefore been labeled a patriotic poet quite early on. In
1952, Xiao Difei 蕭滌非 wrote an article which portrays Du Fu as a poet who learned from both life and people.121 In 1962, Xiao Difei wrote another article about Du Fu entitled “The People’s Poet (renmin de shiren 人民的詩人).” Selecting poems by Du Fu, the patriotic “People’s Poet”, as one’s subject matter was hence relatively safe in the
1950s. This may constitute another factor in explaining why Lu specifically chose to illustrate Du Fu’s poetry.
4.3 Lu Yanshao’s Paintings after Du Fu’s Poems in the 1950s
Burton Watson (New York: Columbus University Press, 2007), 135; Confucius, The Analects of Confucius, trans. Arthur Waley (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 227. 119 Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 24. 120 Liang Qichao, “Qingsheng Du Fu,” in Du Fu yanjiu lunwen ji, vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962): 8. 121 Xiao Difei, “Xuexi renmin yuyan de shiren,” in Du Fu yanjiu lunwen ji, vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1963): 27. 46
During his formative years, Lu Yanshao became fascinated by Du Fu’s mastery of language and image. The artist’s enthusiasm for the Tang poet was magnified during the exile to Sichuan imposed by the Sino-Japanese War, a theme that resonated with Du Fu as well.122 The connection between the artist and Du Fu rose to a new level after Lu
Yanshao was labeled a Rightist in 1957. It was at this time that Lu tried to express implicitly his unhappiness and solitude through Du Fu’s poetry.
Three groups of Lu Yanshao’s paintings after Du Fu will be discussed. The first includes four surviving sections of a handscroll (originally eight sections) after Du Fu’s
Eight Poems on Autumn (Qiuxing bashou《秋興八首》) painted in 1950 [Figure 5-8].
The second group consists of a single painting from Lu Yanshao’s album of Du Fu’s poems made in 1956 [Figure 27]. The third group considers fourteen paintings in Lu
Yanshao’s famous Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems123 [Figure 28-41].
Before examining these three sets of paintings, it is necessary to explain first why they are so crucial to understanding first the psychological connection between Lu
Yanshao and Du Fu, and second the maturation of Lu Yanshao’s art. 1950 marked the year right after the PRC was established, and Lu Yanshao himself considered the album he painted this year to be a summary of his eight years in Sichuan. Lu moreover considered this album to be a landmark of his early artistic career bringing together
122 In 1938, Lu Yanshao arrived in Chongqing. Lu first worked as a secretary in an arms factory, and later he became a clerk on the farm because his friend Jin Shouyan was in charge of the farm section. Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 37. 123 Although the paintings of this album were made in different periods, based on Lang Shaojun’s research, the first fourteen paintings were among the earliest twenty-five paintings painted in 1959. 47 poetry, calligraphy and painting.124 The 1956 handscroll was painted a year before Lu was labeled a Rightist. Comparing this painting with the 1959 painting is thus helpful in demonstrating the changes that occurred in Lu’s landscape painting after being punished as a Rightist. Finally, the Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems is Lu Yanshao’s most representative work. Lu Yanshao himself has two datings for the first twenty-five paintings of this album, one is 1959 and another is 1962. Underlying these two datings, there were different motivations of undertaking these first twenty-five paintings, which will be discussed shortly.
4.3.1 Landscape after Du Fu in 1950
Lu Yanshao fled to Sichuan for eight years between 1938 and 1946. Lu’s family arrived in Chongqing in February 1938. In 1939, Lu went to Chengdu, Leshan and Yibin
宜賓 to hold solo shows, which were unexpectedly successful. The president and dean of
Wuhan University, Wang Xingbei 王星北 and Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛, went to Lu’s solo show in Leshan, and considered Lu’s paintings to be the greatest ones they had seen in
Sichuan. After the show, Lu travelled widely in Sichuan. Mt. Qingcheng 青城山 and Mt.
Emei 峨眉山 are the two major mountains to which Lu went.125
When World War II ended in 1945, Lu immediately set out on his journey back home. His family was too poor to buy ship tickets, which were very hard to get after the
124 Lu Yanshao attached Six Poems on Autumn written by himself to this 1950 album, which was inscribed by multiple prestigious artists including Feng Chaoran, Shen Yinmo 沈尹默, Ye Gongchuo 葉恭綽, Huang Binhong, Wu Hufan, Mao Guangsheng 冒廣生, Pan Boying 潘伯鷹, and Xie Zhiliu 謝稚柳, etc. For details please refer to Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 53. 125 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 37-42. 48 war ended. Therefore they travelled home by raft. Riding rafts on the Yangzi River was dangerous, but very important to Lu’s painting. He observed the water in the landscape, and created a unique way to render it with flexible lines. Moreover, in his later landscape paintings, the scenery of Yangzi River and Sichuan province appear frequently.126
Among the eight paintings after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, only four images are accessible for viewing [Figure 5-8]. The first, sixth, seventh, and the eighth painting are respectively related to the first, sixth, seventh, and the eighth poems by Du Fu.
The sixth painting was created based on the sixth poem of Eight Poems on Autumn
[Figure 6]. Analysis of this painting and poem reveals that Lu’s painting is not a representation of Du Fu’s poetic feeling. Lu Yanshao adopted Du Fu’s poems during this period mainly because the scenery described by Du Fu corresponds with the landscape that Lu Yanshao experienced firsthand.
I will start the analysis by interpreting the sixth poem of Du Fu’s Eight Poems on
Autumn based on Du Fu’s Poems Annotated by Qian Qianyi (1582-1664).127 The reason
I interpret this version of Du’s poem is because Lu Yanshao mentioned “Before I went to
Sichuan, I had only Du Fu’s Poems Annotated by Qian Qianyi in my baggage.”128 Here is the poem:
The mouth of Qutang Gorge and the end of Qujiang Lake,
Ten thousand miles of wind and mist lead to the bland autumn.
126 Ibid., 44-48. 127 Du, Fu, Dushi Qianzhu, ed. Qian Qianyi (Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1965). This book was reprinted by Shijie shuju in 1965 in Taibei. It is possible that earlier editions were available before 1949, and within the access of Lu Yanshao. 128 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 38. 49
瞿唐峽口曲江頭，萬里風烟接素秋。
Flowers that lead to the royal palace surround the city,
The lotus palace comes to the sentiments of the one who is in the border area.
花萼夾城通御氣，芙蓉小苑入邊愁。
Yellow cranes/birds fly around the bead curtains and embroidered pillars,
White water birds leave the decorated hawser and poles (of the boat).
朱簾繡柱圍黃鶴（通作鵠），錦纜牙檣起白鷗。
Look back to the place (Chang’an) that was prosperous,
Qin area has been the heartland of emperors since ancient periods.129
迴首可憐歌舞地，秦中自古帝王州。
The sixth poem describes Du Fu’s vision of Chang’an (modern city Xi’an), which was conquered by the An Lushan Rebellion, causing the Xuanzong emperor to flee to
Sichuan. This is the reason that the poem opens with “The mouth of Qutang Gorge and the end of Qujiang Lake.” Qutang Gorge is located in Sichuan province where the
Xuanzong emperor, the poet Du Fu and the painter Lu Yanshao himself stayed for years.
Qujiang Lake was a center for the social elite to entertain in the Tang capital of
129 This is my translation of the sixth poem of the Eight Poems on Autumn. The standard English translation exists in Du Fu, The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, trans. David Hinton (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1989), 83. Hinton translates the sixth poem of Reflections in Autumn, “From Ch’ü-tang Gorge to Meandering River, ten thousand miles of smoke-scored wind piece this bleached autumn together. Through Calyx Tower arcade, frontier grief haunting Hibiscus Park, the imperial presence passes. Ornate pillars and pearl screens collect yellow cranes, and gulls scatter at brocade rigging and ivory masts…Turn toward it, land of song and dance, pity ancient Ch’in serving kings and princes from the beginning.” Another standard English translation can be seen in Du Fu, Du Fu: A Life in Poetry, trans. David Young (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, 2008), 178-179. 50
Chang’an. In the first two verses, a contrast between the prosperity of the lost capital and the landscape on the journey of fleeing it is described. Qujiang Lake was also the place where the lotus palace was located. The first and second verses thus connect to express
Du’s vision of the lost Chang’an.
In Lu Yanshao’s painting [Figure 6], Qutang Gorge is depicted. Rapid water is rendered by pale lines, a technique Lu developed by observing the water of the Yangzi river.130 The lines are so pale that they are hard to see. The foreground and the background are divided by an almost blank area. Negative space is used frequently by Lu
Yanshao, either to render water, or to depict mist. Lu Yanshao’s brilliant use of negative space was probably inspired by Shitao’s painting [Figure 4]. Although Lu Yanshao consciously states that he “never emulated even one painting by Shitao,”131 artistic similarities are easy to find. In discussing Shitao, Lu Yanshao admits to the similarity, but refuses to accept himself as Shitao’s student: “Shitao is not my teacher, but my classmate.”132 The brown coloring the right part of the painting signals the autumnal season. Nothing else in the painting echoes Du Fu’s poetic vision. While some might argue that this painting expresses Lu’s frustration over China’s loss of territory at the hands of Japan, a sentiment that resonates with Du Fu’s own poem, no further visual evidence supports this claim.
What’s more, Lu passed the Qutang Gorge in 1945 when he was on his way back to his hometown after the Second Sino-Japanese War. The two rafts depicted in the painting
130 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 48. 131 Ibid., 53. 132 Ibid., 53. 51 probably are what the painter took to get out of Sichuan and make his way back home.
The rapid water rendered in long flowing pale lines on the one hand conveys the danger of the journey, and on the other hand expresses the artist’s eagerness to return home.
Moreover, whereas Du Fu’s vision emphasizes the loss of Chang’an, Lu Yanshao’s painting focuses on the Qutang Gorge. Lu mentioned his experience of passing the
Qutang Gorge in his autobiography, “We went down to Qutang Gorge. Two banks stand against each other. There was a gigantic rock called yanyu in the center of the river.”133
The imposing rock of yanyu is depicted in the center of this painting.
Living through a period of strife, both Du Fu and Lu Yanshao fled to and stayed in
Sichuan province for several years. According to Lu, “The landscape in front of me looks welcoming because Du Fu mentioned these scenes.”134 Scenery described in Du Fu’s poems in most cases was similar to what Lu saw. In 1950, rather than depicting Du Fu’s poetic feelings, Lu Yanshao adopted Du Fu’s poems because the landscape described by
Du Fu corresponded with what Lu saw.
4.3.2 A Painting after Du Fu in 1956
In 1956, a year before he was labeled a Rightist, Lu Yanshao painted a series of paintings illustrating various poems by Du Fu. One of these followed Du Fu’s poem
North Mountain in Dongtun (dongtun beiyan《東屯北崦》[Figure 27]). This painting is interesting because it suggests a separation between the feelings of Lu and Du Fu, which
133 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 46. 134 Ibid., 38. 52 means that Lu Yanshao made a lyrical scene according to the two verses that he chose without psychological connections. Du Fu’s poem is as follows:
Robbers make life difficult, people here are extremely poor.
盜賊浮生困，誅求異俗貧。
Only birds still live in the empty village, until the sunset nobody appears.
空村惟見鳥，落日未（一作不）逢人。
Wind flowing toward me while I am walking in the mountain, looking at the essence of the pine tree dripping on my body.
步壑風吹面，看松露滴身。
I turn my white-haired head back, and see the yellow dust in the battlefield.
遠山迴白首，戰地有黃塵。
This poem describes the desolate scene that Du Fu saw in the mountain. Robbers and war impoverished the area of Dongtun. In Du Fu’s Poems Annotated by Qian Qianyi, there is no comment about this poem. A space was thus left for the artist’s own interpretation. I suspect that Lu Yanshao chose “Wind flowing toward me while I am walking in the mountain, looking at the essence of the pinewood dripping on my body” to illustrate because these two verses are poetic, not because Lu wanted to express the same emotion conveyed by the poet.
The pine tree is a symbol of persistence and virtue during difficult times because it is green in cold winter; therefore it is one of the favorite subjects of many literati painters.
In Lu Yanshao’s 1956 painting, the gesture of looking at the pine tree is depicted by the
53 scholar’s upturned head. In this painting, Lu stuck to what is described by Du Fu’s two verses and created a lyrical rather than desolate scene.
Lu painted another painting following the same two verses in October 1979, the year he was relieved of the label of landlord and reclaimed his reputation [Figure 42].135 In the
1979 painting, the gesture of “looking at” the pine tree is not depicted. Instead, the pine stands behind the scholar, seemingly to indicate the scholar in the painting or even Lu
Yanshao himself as a person who insists on his virtue during adversity.136 Another difference between these two paintings of one subject is that the 1956 painting’s composition is closed while the composition of the 1979 painting is opened by the left part of the painting.
The different compositions that are seen in these two paintings, as far as I am concerned, are the results of the historical context. First, in 1951, to retrain himself for the new society, Lu Yanshao went to learn how to paint lianhuanhua in a training class conducted by the Shanghai Municipal Cultural Bureau and Shanghai branch of the All-
China Art Workers Association.137 The relatively closed composition in the 1956 painting probably is influenced by the standard composition of lianhuanhua.
135Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 241. 136 Lu Yanshao painted another painting in 1980. Similarly, a scholar gazes into the distance with a pine tree standing at back [Figure 43]. 137 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 71. Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 54. 54
Second, artists such as Lu Yanshao started to draw lianhuanhua, which Lu Yanshao did not consider his specialty but rather a way of making a living.138 Moreover, in 1950s and 1960s, Lu Yanshao painted many new figure paintings to serve the country, as discussed in Chapter Three of this thesis. Rather than focusing on the genre for the artist’s authentic expression of self, the landscape painting, Lu might have felt limited and thus a relatively closed composition is shown in the 1956 painting. The happiness after reclaiming his reputation probably should be partially responsible for the relatively open composition of the painting in 1979.
In the painting after Du Fu’s North Mountain in Dongtun made in 1956, the composition implicitly reveals the artist’s feeling; however, what Du Fu saw and thought is still not depicted. In other words, what the artist felt is still separated from the feeling expressed in the poem. In the 1956 painting, Lu Yanshao created a lyrical scene by sticking to the two verses he selected. This is important because after Lu Yanshao was labeled a Rightist in 1957, the relationship between Lu Yanshao and Du Fu’s poems, at least in the 1959 paintings, became more complicated.
4.3.3 Landscape after Du Fu in 1959
The first fourteen surviving paintings in Lu Yanshao’s Hundred-Leaf Album after
Du Fu’s Poems are discussed here [Figure 28-41]. Lu Yanshao himself had two datings for the first twenty-five paintings. Lu Yanshao said in 1984 and 1989 that the first forty
138 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 56-57. 55 paintings were created in 1962 for Du Fu’s 1250th anniversary.139 However, an inscription written on the Hundred-leaf album after Du Fu indicates that the first twenty- five paintings were painted in the summer of 1959.140
Perhaps the artist just did not remember the dates clearly in 1980s. However the motivations of creating paintings after Du Fu in 1959 and 1962 seem to be different. In
1959, because he was labeled a Rightist Lu was sent to labor reform that had nothing to do with art. Lu said in 1959 “Every time after being criticized (pidou 批斗), I felt frustrated. In those situations, I always wrote Du Fu’s poems to show my feeling.”141 By contrast, in 1961 Lu was rehabilitated as a wrongly labeled Rightist and his life conditions became better.142 Here I adopt Lang Shaojun’s research and believe that the first twenty-five paintings were painted in 1959. I try to show that unlike Lu’s 1950 and
1956 paintings discussed above, these paintings painted in 1959 implicitly expressed Lu
Yanshao’s frustration, which echoes Du Fu’s feeling in the poems.
In the Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, every painting is inscribed with two verses from Du Fu’s poems. The two verses Lu wrote on the paintings are mostly descriptive and seem to have little to do with frustration. However, Su Shi’s friend the monk master Shenliao 參廖子 mentions, “A painting of the couplet would succeed only if the imagery provoked the viewer to recollect the entire poem and the sense of isolation
139 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 59. Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibai kai (Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992), 101. 140 For details of dating, please refer to Lang Shaojun, “Lu Yanshao de huihua,” Xin Meishu, vol. 29, no. 4 (2008): 9. 141 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 229. 142 Ibid., 231. 56 that the couplet captured.”143 By close reading of Du Fu’s poems that Lu Yanshao chose to paint in 1959, Du Fu’s feelings seem to correspond with what Lu probably felt after he was labeled a Rightist. With Lu Yanshao’s words in 1959 “I always inscribed Du Fu’s words on my painting after being criticized,”144 the correspondence between Du Fu and
Lu Yanshao in 1959 should not be a coincidence.
In the fifth leaf, Lu wrote “morning bell and humid bank, stone house hides in the mist 晨鐘雲岸濕，勝地石堂烟 [Figure 32].” In this leaf, the bank and mist are rendered by negative space, which probably is influenced by Shitao. The overall color palette is similar to Shitao’s leaf in an album of twelve paintings now in the Metropolitan Museum
[Figure 4]. Interestingly, the first two verses inscribed on Shitao’s leaf are also from Du
Fu’s poem.
The poem inscribed on the fifth leaf describes an occasion on which Du Fu is sending off his friend. Following the above two verses are “when your boat goes beyond the water birds, I feel sad about your departure because you are so virtuous 柔橹轻鸥外
，含凄觉汝贤.” This is Du Fu’s compliment to his friend and his plaint on the relationship between people.145 The plaint on the relationship between people is what Lu
Yanshao probably would feel when he was labeled a Rightist.
Lu Yanshao’s frustration can also be seen in other leaves of the 1959 album. In leaf eight, Lu painted a scene depicting Du’s verse “a lonely tree stands by an old man’s hut
143 Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 54. 144 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 229. 145 Qiu Zhaoao, Dushi xiangzhu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 1266. 57 in a desolate village 獨樹老夫家 [Figure 35].” Other objects that appear in the poem, such as boat, bamboo, fish, are not depicted in the painting. The verses “New era starts
(however I am) in a desolate village, a lonely tree stands by an old man’s hut 荒村建子
月，獨樹老夫家.” are the emphasis of this painting. These two verses are interesting, because everything in these two verses is depicted except “a new era starts 建子月.” It is hard to express “a new era starts” in a painting, however, the omission can also be understood in other direction. The absence of “a new era” can be argued as what the artist wants to express after he was labeled a Rightist----Although a new era began, I was living in such a desolate condition. This interpretation echoes leaf nine, the inscription on which is followed by the verses, “A great dynasty does not have any waste, but I have become an old man who has been sick for a long time 聖朝無棄物，老病已成翁 [Figure 36].”
The pictorial subject of leaf eight [Figure 35] is similar to another painting painted in 1944 by Lu Yanshao [Figure 44]. That painting is painted after the Song poet Qin
Guan’s (秦观 1049-1100) verses “Several crows are flying beyond the sunset, a stream flows around a desolated village 斜陽外，寒鴉數點，流水繞孤村.” In both paintings, hut, trees, and crows are depicted to create desolate scenes. Space is rendered by horizontal lines and the diminution of scale of birds. However the degree of desolation is differentiated by tonalities. Leaf eight looks far more isolated because of the use of monochromatic ink and slight brown. In the 1944 painting, sunset is indicated by the warm brown color. The different tonalities can be seen as the results of different feelings that the poems express. In Qin Guan’s poem, sadness is a result of departure. In Du Fu’s
58 poem, it is a melancholy that resulted from desolate life in a new era. The different degrees of sadness and desolation that the artist felt in different periods can be conveyed by the inscriptions on the paintings that have similar pictorial subjects.
Although Lu felt frustrated by being punished as a Rightist, he was not totally disappointed. Lu continued to paint landscape paintings,146 the authentic expression of himself, and still insisted on his virtue, because pine tree and bamboo appear frequently in his fourteen paintings created in 1959. In the second leaf, pinewood and bamboo not only appear in the poem but also are depicted in the painting [Figure 29]. Although pinewood is not mentioned in the fourth, sixth, and seventh poems, pines are depicted in the paintings [Figures: 31, 33, 34]. Among the fourth, sixth, and seventh painting, the pinewood in the seventh leaf is most extraordinary [Figure 34]. In the seventh painting, the pine trees have unique leaves facing towards the same direction, and they grow out of snowy cliffs. Cold weather is indicated by snow on the rocky mountain and the flowing vines. But it is in such bad weather that the pinewood maintains green, just as the scholar in the painting insists on his virtue and worries about the country.147 The pinewood that appears in the 1959 paintings may also indicate Lu’s insistence on his virtue during the adversity.
Lu’s insistence on his virtue is also revealed by an inclination toward retreat that can also be seen from the fourteen paintings. In the eleventh painting [Figure 38], Lu
146 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 57. 147 There are verses indicating the scholar is worried about the country. The verses are “The country is worthy of my tears, peace or danger is dependent on planning 社稷堪流 涕，安危在運籌.” 59 inscribed, “the hill on the ground is very stable, the four directions of the high mountains are the same 平地一川稳，高山四面同.” In the painting, Lu did not limit his envisioning to these two verses and depicted a lyrical village scene. The village is surrounded by mist, plants and trees, which echo with the following verses “mist and frost in the sunshine of the suburb, plants are ready to be harvested. Sorrow comes from the change of life, I would like to stay in the laurel grove 烟霜淒野日，粳稻熟天風。人
事傷蓬轉，吾將守桂叢.” In the eleventh painting, both the scene in Du Fu’s poem and
Du Fu’s intention of staying in the laurel grove--in other words, retreating--are conveyed.
At the same time, Lu Yanshao’s own inclination of living a reclusive life is also expressed by the beautiful village scene.
Retreat is highly praised by ancient scholars. Recluse poets such as Tao Qian were praised by Su Shi and other prominent scholars. In Lu Yanshao’s early years, he had a dream of reclusion from the chaotic world. In 1934, Lu bought several piece of land in the Shangbai 上柏 mountains, Zhejiang148 for his retirement years 作終老之計.149
During those days, Lu lived following an ancient recluse’s life style. Lu describes the life in his small farm in Shangbai Mountain by citing Tao Yuanming’s essay “we can hear the sound of chickens and dogs of our neighbor’s 雞犬之聲相聞.”150 The reclusive life in the mountain not only provided Lu a good environment for studying art, but also
148 Shangbai mountain is located in Wukang 武康鎮, Deqing 德清縣, Huzhou 湖州市, Zhejiang Province 浙江省. 149 This might be partially why Lu was punished for being a landlord in 1969. 150 Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 30. This sentence is cited from Tao Qian’s Taohuayuan ji. 60 supported Lu painting whatever he wanted, instead of painting what the market needed.151 In Lu’s autobiography Lu Yanshao zixu, he describes the experience of living in the mountain in a very proud and relaxing tone. Living in Shangbai Mountains must left a good impression on Lu, particularly compared with his later life in Sichuan.
Lu’s reclusive life was disturbed by the Japanese invasion in 1937.152 After returning from Sichuan to Shanghai, for several years, Lu tried to serve the country with his new figure paintings, such as Teaching Mama to Read, which we can consider not only as a Communist action, but also Confucian. However, Lu’s inclination of retreating was again strengthened after 1957. Immediately after Lu was condemned as a Rightist, he painted a painting after Tao Yuanming’s poem depicting village life [Figure 45], which is similar to the scene depicted in the eleventh painting from the Hundred-leaf album after
Du Fu [Figure 38]. In the eleventh leaf painted in 1959, the scene Lu created possibly is an idealization of what Lu Yanshao’s small farm looked like. The feeling that Lu
Yanshao wanted to express here matches what Du Fu described in his poem perfectly.
The gap between Lu Yanshao’s painting and Du Fu’s poem has been bridged.
At least in the first fourteen paintings of the Hundred-Leaf Album, Lu Yanshao seemed to begin to express his feeling not only through his painting, but also by Du Fu’s
151 Ibid., 30. Two possible connotations lie under this narrative by Lu Yanshao in his autobiography. First, if Lu Yanshao’s paintings sold well, he would not have a complaint about the market. In the 1930s, competition in the art market was serious, and having an exhibition to sell painting was very expensive. Lu Yanshao’s complaint reveals distaste for the market in the 1930s to some extent. Second, it can be argued that Lu Yanshao enjoyed living in a life style of the pre-modern literati painters, who did not need to paint for the market. 152 For details of Lu Yanshao’s reclusive life in Shangbai mountain, please refer to Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao Lunyi, ed. Shu Shijun (Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2010), 30, 34 and 35. 61 verses that are not inscribed on the painting. James Cahill elaborates Teng Gu’s 滕固 second point of the definition of literati art by providing two basic concepts: “1. The quality of expression in a picture is principally determined by the personal qualities of the man who creates it, and the circumstances under which he creates it. 2. The expressive content of a picture may be partially or wholly independent of its representational content.”153 In Lu Yanshao’s 1950 and 1956 paintings, Lu simply adopted Du Fu’s verses to create a relevant representation of the landscape. However, after 1957, in a context of being labeled a Rightist, Lu returned to his authentic expression of self, “the three perfections,” by which Lu’s own melancholy and inclination of retreating are expressed beyond the representation of the landscape.
Although Lu Yanshao was not a literati artist, the form of making a painting according to a poem can be viewed as pictorial improvisation (he 和), which was popular among ancient literati artists.154 Moreover, based on the analysis of Lu’s paintings after
Du Fu in 1950, 1956 and 1959, the increasingly evident psychological relationship between Lu Yanshao and Du Fu, as well as Lu Yanshao’s identity of a “scholar-style
(wenren shi de 文人式的)” artist was enhanced after Lu was labeled a Rightist.
In sum, complicating the psychological connection between painting and poetry, as well as developing a personal style inspired by Shitao indicate that Lu had reached the mature phase in his artistic career. The way that Lu reached this achievement was unique.
153 Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i- chang (1555-1636) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971), 2. 154 Martin J. Powers, “Love and Marriage in Song China: Tao Yuanming Comes Home,” Ars Orientalis, vol. 28 (1998): 52. 62
Due to being punished as a Rightist, Lu was put into adversity. In this situation, Lu shifted his focus from serving the country back to the practice of “the three perfections,” and finally made a great breakthrough. Lu’s return to his authentic expression of self also can be considered from a Confucian perspective, particularly the teaching of Mencius “If poor, they [“men of antiquity”] attended to their own virtue in solitude.”155
155 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 453. 63
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Lu Yanshao was well trained in the traditional “three perfections” in his early years.
After 1949, Lu enthusiastically pursued party guidelines, bringing together traditionalist painting and Communist subject matter to serve the new China. Teaching Mama to Read exemplifies Lu’s painting of this kind. Lu’s effort in painting Communist subjects is also directly related to his early Confucian education; Lu Yanshao did not simply follow
Communist directives, but might have seen himself as fulfilling Mencius’ dictum “If advanced to dignity, they made the whole kingdom virtuous as well.156
Being condemned as a Rightist in 1957 was a turning point in Lu’s artistic career. It was at this time that Lu turned away from party ideals and returned to his own artistic interests. In 1959, Lu created a series of Chinese landscape paintings that reveal his mature phase for the first time. By comparing three groups of paintings illustrating Du
Fu’s poetry over the span of nine years, I argue that the psychological connection linking
Lu Yanshao’s painting to Du Fu’s poems became increasingly complicated. Through this practice, Lu’s mastery of “the three perfections” reached an unprecedented level. This was a direct outcome of his punishment as a “Rightist.” The shift of Lu’s artistic focus back onto his authentic forms of self-expression as a result of political persecution, a
156 Ibid., 453. Although Lu Yanshao’s situation was far from “dignity 達,” compared with the pre-1949 experience of working as a clerk in Sichuan, Lu was engaged with the Artists Association and already had some reputation between 1949 and 1957. 64 common experience of premodern Confucian officials, can be viewed as a moral or ethical response that follows the Confucian teaching, “If poor, they [“men of antiquity”] attended to their own virtue in solitude.”157
Lu Yanshao’s artistic life in the 1950s can thus be depicted as a twisted rope composed of two strands: one Confucian and the other Communist. These two strands were tightly woven between 1949 and 1957, but unraveled quickly after Lu was labeled a
“Rightist.” The Communist strand grew thinner. The Confucian strand persevered and began to dominate. After experiencing the tragic transition from “dignity” to “adversity,”
Lu finally followed Confucian teachings, returned to authentic forms of self-expression in landscape painting, and ultimately reached a new phase in his artistic career.
157 Mencius, The Works of Mencius, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 453. 65
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Appendix A: Important Events of Lu Yanshao’s Artistic Life158
158 Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 218-255. 72
1909: Lu was born in Nanxiang City 南翔, Jiading County 嘉定, Jiangsu Province.
1915: Lu attended The Fourth People’s Elementary School of Jiading 嘉定縣立第四國 民小學.
1919: Lu graduated from elementary school, and went to Jiading Second Advanced Primary School 嘉定第二高等小學.
1920: Lu transferred to Nanxiang Dasiqian Xianggong Primary School 南翔大寺前翔 公小學.
1921: Lu got a copy of The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Jieziyuan huapu 芥子園畫譜) from a neighbor and started emulating paintings in this book.
1922: Lu went to Chengzhong Middle School 澄衷中學 in Shanghai, whose library provided Lu Album of Famous Chinese Paintings for emulation (Zhongguo minghua ji 中 國名畫集).
1926: Lu graduated from Chengzhong Middle School and went to Wuxi Art Academy 無 錫美術專科學校 and studied for half a year.
1927: Lu was introduced to Wang Tongyu 王同愈 by Lu’s cousin Li Weicheng 李維城. Wang Tongyu introduced Lu to Feng Chaoran 馮超然.
1929: Lu married his cousin Zhu Yanyin 朱燕因.
1934: Lu built his farm in the Shangbai Mountains 上柏山 in Zhejiang. In May, Lu travelled with a friend to Qufu 曲阜, Mt. Tai 泰山, Ji’nan 濟南, Tianjin 天津, Beiping 北 平, the Great Wall 長城, Taihang Mountains 太行山, Datong 大同, Yungang Caves 雲崗 石窟, and returned to Shanghai.
1935: Lu stated that he went to the Second National Art Exhibition 全國美展 in Nanjing in 1935. However, the exhibition was held in 1937. 159
1937: Lu lived with his family on the farm in the Shangbai Mountains, Zhejiang. After July 7, Lu and his family fled to Sichuan.
1938: Lu arrived in Chongqing 重慶 in February, and began to work as a clerk in a factory. Lu held his first solo show in Chongqing. By this exhibition, Lu was known to
159 Julia F. Andrews, “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 3 (1990): 556.
73
Shen Junru 沈鈞儒, Chen Shuren 陳樹人, Chang Renxia 常任俠, Chen Zhifo 陳之佛, and Huang Junbi 黃君璧.
1939: Lu’s solo show was moved to Chengdu 成都, Leshan 樂山, and Yibin 宜賓. Lu attracted the attention of some cultural celebrities, such as Wang Xingbei 王星北 and Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛.
1945: After the end of the Second World War, Lu prepared to go back to his hometown from Chongqing.
1946: Lu and his family returned to his hometown Nanxiang.
1947: Lu established Baigui Farm 白圭農場 in Nanxiang and prepared for a solo show in Wuxi.
1948: Song Wenzhi 宋文治 visited Lu Yanshao in Nanxiang. Assisted by Lu Yanshao’s friend Cheng Jingxi 程景溪, Lu held a solo show in Wuxi.
1949: Lu read Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature 在延安 文藝座談會上的講話 (1942)” for the first time.
1950: Lu created an album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn 秋興八首.
1951: Lu moved to Shanghai with his family, and attended a lianhuanhua class organized by “the Shanghai Municipal Cultural Bureau and Shanghai branch of the AWA (Art Workers Association)”160 After graduation from the lianhuahua class, Lu was assigned to a private press called Tongkang shuju 同康書局.
1952: Lu became a member of Shanghai National Guohua Research Association (Shanghai xin guohua yanjiuhui 上海新國畫研究會).
1953: Lu painted Exploration in the Snowy Mountains (Xueshan kance 雪山勘測), and this painting was collected by the Chinese Artists Association. Lu was introduced to Liu Haisu 劉海粟 by Liu Dingzhi 劉定之.
1954: Lu met Huang Binhong 黃賓虹 at the Artists Association of Eastern China.
1955: Lu went to Hefei, Anhui Province with Kong Xiaoyu 孔小瑜, Xu Zihe 徐子鶴, and Song Wenzhi. Lu was assigned to be the director of an art school in Hefei.
160 Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 75. 74
1956: Lu painted a series of paintings after different poems of Du Fu. In addition, Lu painted Teaching Mama to Read 教媽媽識字 in March in Hefei. This painting was not only exhibited in the Second National Guohua Exhibition 第二屆全國國畫展覽會, which was held from July 8 to July 18, but was also published as the cover image of the July issue of Meishu. In autumn, Lu was invited to work for Shanghai Guohua Institute 上海國畫院, and he went to Shanghai.
1957: Lu Yanshao was condemned as a Rightist.
1958: Lu started doing labor reform (laodong gaizao 勞動改造) as a punishment for being a Rightist.
1959: Lu continued doing manual labor as punishment. Lu painted the first twenty-five paintings of the Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems.161
1960: Lu continued doing manual labor as punishment.
1961: In October, Lu was rehabilitated as a wrongly labeled Rightist.
1962: Lu continued his creation of the Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, and finished the other seventy-five paintings. Invited by Pan Tianshou 潘天壽, Lu began teaching in the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts 浙江美術學院 as a visiting painter 兼課 藝術家.
1965: Because the Education Department canceled the system of visiting scholars and painters, Lu stopped going to Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts.
1967-1971: Lu was labeled a landlord in 1969, and he was severely criticized during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Lu’s brush and paper was confiscated and he could not paint. Lu’s Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems was also confiscated and he lost one third of the paintings.
1977: Lu started writing Discussion of Landscape Painting (Shanshuihua chuyi 山水畫 芻議) in November.
1978: In December, Shanghai Guohua Institute announced that Lu Yanshao was mistakenly labeled a Rightist.
1979: In January, Lu Yanshao was rehabilitated as a mistakenly condemned landlord. In August, Lu was rehired by Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts as graduate adviser.
1980: Lu published Discussion of Landscape Painting.
161 Lang Shaojun, “Lu Yanshao de huihua,” Xin Meishu, vol. 29, no. 4 (2008): 9. 75
1981: Lu held a solo exhibition in Hong Kong in May. In September, Lu became a member of Chinese Painting Research Institute 中國畫研究院 in Beijing.
1983: Lu was elected to be a deputy of the 6th National People’s Congress.
1988: Lu was elected to be a deputy of the 7th National People’s Congress.
1989: Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Zhejiang Guohua Institute 浙江畫院, Chinese Artists Association’s branch in Zhejiang 美協浙江分會, and the Xiling Painting and Calligraphy Institute 西泠書畫院 held “Lu Yanshao’s Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition 陸儼少歷年書畫展.” Lu made thirty paintings for the Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, which had lost one third of the paintings in the Cultural Revolution.
1991: Lu held a retrospective exhibition in China Gallery in Shenzhen 深圳中國畫廊, Guangdong.
1993: Lu died in Zhongshan hospital in Shanghai in October 23.
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Appendix B: Figures
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Figure 1 Wang Mian (1310-1359), A Prunus in Moonlight, undated (c. 1350s), hanging scroll, ink on silk, The Cleveland Museum of Art (after Maggie Bickford, “The Flowering Plum in Painting,” in Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice [New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1985], p. 81)
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Figure 2 Shen Zhou (1427-1509), Rainy Thoughts, 1487, hanging scroll, ink on paper, 67.1 x 30.6 cm, National Palace Museum, Taibei
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Figure 3 Wen Zhengming (1470-1559), Spring in Jiangnan, hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, National Palace Museum, Taibei (after Wupai hua jiushi nian zhan [Taibei: Guoli gugong bowu yuan, 1975], p. 14)
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Figure 4 Shitao (1630-1724), Wilderness Color, one leaf from an album of twelve, 1700, ink and color on paper, 27.6 x 21.6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Artstor)
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Figure 5 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 1, 1950, ink and color on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=411)
Figure 6 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 6, 1950, ink and color on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=406)
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Figure 7 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 7, 1950, ink on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=408)
Figure 8 Lu Yanshao, Album after Du Fu’s Eight Poems on Autumn, leaf 8, 1950, ink and color on paper. (http://artist.artmuseum.com.cn/hisArtworkDetail.htm?id=404)
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Figure 9 Lu Yanshao, Teaching Mama to Read, 1956, ink and color on paper, 78.5 x 52 cm (after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chuban she, 2002], p. 17)
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Figure 10 Lu Yanshao, After Palace Ladies Playing Double Sixes, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 39 x 27 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 43)
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Figure 11 Lu Yanshao, After Night Revels of Han Xizai, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 25 x 30 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 25)
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Figure 12 Lu Yanshao, After Tao Yuanming Reterning to Seclusion, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 28 x 29 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 29)
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Figure 13 Lu Yanshao, After Dongfang Shuo, 1956, ink on paper, 31 x 15 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 83)
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Figure 14 Lu Yanshao, After Elegant Gathering, 1957, ink on paper, 27 x 28 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 31)
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Figure 15 Lu Yanshao, After Lady in Autumn, 1956, ink and slight color on paper, 29 x 23 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 41)
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Figure 16 Lu Yanshao, After Chen Hongshou’s Painting, 1956, ink on paper, 29 x 24 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 35)
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Figure 17 Lu Yanshao, Jiao mama shizi, 1957, ink and color on paper, 48 x 29 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 150)
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Figure 18 Lu Yanshao, Figures, 1956, ink and color on paper, 22 x 32 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 119)
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Figure 19 Lu Yanshao, Learning, 1957, ink and color on paper, 48 x 30 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 153)
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Figure 20 Jiang Feng, Studying is Good, 1942, woodcut (after Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994], p. 21)
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Figure 21 Tang Wenxuan, Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-law on Their Way to Winter Study, 1954, ink and color on paper, 115 x 67 cm, National Art Museum of China
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Figure 22 Jiang Yan, Testing Mom, 1953, ink and color on paper, 113.6 x 64.6 cm, National Art Museum of China
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Figure 23 Lu Yanshao, Diligent People in Spring Morning, 1963, ink and color on paper, 138 x 68 (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 177)
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Figure 24 Lu Yanshao, People Start to Leave the Mountain Market, 1964, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 169)
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Figure 25 Lu Yanshao, People Start to Leave the Mountain Market, 1964, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 171)
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Figure 26 Lu Yanshao, Fish Harvesting in Xin’anjiang Reservoir, 1965, ink and color on paper, 69 x 53 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 175) 101
Figure 27 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Du Fu’s North Mountain in Dongtun, 1956, ink and color on paper, 23.5 x 36 cm (after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002], p. 165)
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Figure 28 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf one from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 1) 103
Figure 29 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf two from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 2) 104
Figure 30 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf three from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 3) 105
Figure 31 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf four from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 4) 106
Figure 32 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf five from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 5) 107
Figure 33 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf six from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 6) 108
Figure 34 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf seven from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 7) 109
Figure 35 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf eight from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 8) 110
Figure 36 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf nigh from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 9) 111
Figure 37 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf ten from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 10) 112
Figure 38 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf eleven from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 11)
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Figure 39 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf twelve from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 12) 114
Figure 40 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf thirteen from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 13) 115
Figure 41 Lu Yanshao, Hundred-Leaf Album after Du Fu’s Poems, leaf fourteen from an album, 1959, ink and color on paper (after Lu Yanshao, Du Fu shiyi hua yibaikai [Tianjin: Tianjin yangliuqing huashe, 1992], p. 14)
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Figure 42 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Du Fu’s North Mountain in Dongtun, 1979, ink and color on paper, 49 x 93 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 167)
Figure 43 Lu Yanshao, Scholar under a Pine Tree, 1980, ink and color on paper, 24.5 x 24.5 cm (after Lu Yanshao, Lu Yanshao renwuhua, ed. Shen Mingquan [Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2003], p. 165)
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Figure 44 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Qin Guan’s Poem, 1944, ink and color on paper (after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002], p. 59)
Figure 45 Lu Yanshao, Painting after Tao Qian’s Poem, 1957, ink and color on paper (after Shu Shijun, Lu Yanshao [Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002], p. 64) 118