Inscription upper right:
宴席疎窗意気孤
白雲紅樹帯平蕪
奉常寄興風塵表
為写秋林静者圖
梁清標
「清標」「玉立」
Sitting beside a window at a banquet, I feel lonely,
White clouds, red trees and spreading wild field.
My interests are always in the outside of dusty wind (of the world),
Let (you) paint the quietness in woods.
Liang Qingbiao [Qingbiao] [Yuli] – probably apochryphal
—
Inscription upper left:
陶盃空浮易酒香不知潑墨
為誰忙吾今盡束鵞渓絹酔
拓秋窓倚石床
?山客舎為
黄老々年翁画幷題請 正
華亭高層雲 「高層雲印」「謖苑」
Over a porcelain wine cup floats the flavor of the wine of Yi.
Not knowing for whom I was busily splashing ink,
Now I rolled up all the silk paintings,
Drunken, I open the window in autumn and lie down on the stone bed.
At…? for Huang laolao nian-weng ? I painted and wrote a poem
Huating Gao Cengyun [Seal of Gao Cengyun] [Suyuan]
—
A jumble of massive rocks anchoring a grove of leafy trees provides harbor and shelter for two thatched dwellings, one visibly raised on woody stilts and occupied by a gentleman resting against a low table where some books await his attention. Thick mists shroud and soften the hillocks and towering peaks behind, creating a majestic environment that surrounds the lone figures. Over and over our Chinese scholar-official-gentlemen take refuge in the sanctity of paintings, produced in large part for their enjoyment and also as an escape.
The 17th century in China was one of earth-shattering events. A vast number of paintings produced at that time reflect the state of mind of upper-class citizens living through the topsy-turvy of dynastic change and witnessing not only the fall of a home-grown dynasty but the usurpation of imperial power by a non-Chinese people. Images of a scholar in a modest hut deep in the woods, high in the mountains, or huddled with friends by a rushing stream, or even of a farmer strolling through a field or a workhand on the back of a water buffalo or a chap with a pole either fishing for real or just pretending, all can signify escape from a world whose challenges and demands could be overwhelming, crushing. Reclusion became not only a choice but a necessity for many and if not possible in the real world, then possible through a life in art, through paintings depicting the ideal, ideal for that time and place.
In the illuminating catalogue for the exhibition The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China, [Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2012) Peter Sturman writes: “For the artist, reclusion represented a private space, a chamber within the mind, but it was a private space that was always intended to be shared,” (p. 15), as the artist here has done with the present painting.
Gao Cengyun (1634–1690), zi Erbao, hao Suyuan, was a native of Huating 華亭, in Songjiang prefecture (present-day Shanghai). He was regarded as an accomplished scholar, calligrapher and connoisseur who earned a jinshi degree and served the Manchu government under the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) As a painter, Dong Qichang (1555–1636), the authoritative figure and master of the Huating school of painting, would have been a model and inspiration for Gao, among the scholar-artists keeping the school well and alive during the early Qing (fig. 1). A more restrained version of the features of the present painting is present in an album leaf signed and dated 1686 (fig. 2) and another based on Yuan styles dated to 1683 is illustrated in Gugong shuhuaji.1 In the present painting, Gao notes his reliance on the artist……at the same time there is an individualistic bent here, a reliance on an ancient master but providing an innovative touch that Dong would have approved of.
1. See Gugong shuhuaji, vol. XVII.
Fig. 1: Dong Qichang, “Landscape in the Manner of Huang Gongwang,” hanging scroll, ink on silk, Shanghai Museum, after Wai-kam Ho, ed. And Judith G. Smith, co-ordinating ed., The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang 1555-1636, vol. 1, Seattle and London, 1992, pl. 73, pp. 270-271.
Fig. 2: Gao Cengyun, “Landscape,” album leaf, signed and dated 1686, after Shina Nanga Taisei, vol XI (Tokyo, 1936) p. 236.
Details:
