An in-depth analysis of a work of art requires knowledge on the painter. Another aspect that must be taken into consideration is the period and era to which the work of art belongs to. Our knowledge of early painting, not unlike that of Western classical painting, is chiefly dependent upon copies, paraphrases and literary documents. It is doubtful whether there will be any substantial change in this respect.

          The work of art to be analyzed in this paper is Shen Zhou’s (1427-1509) Poet on a Mountain Top. In Poet on a Mountain Top, Shen expressed his calm mood. The monochrome painting is the preference of literati painter of the time. The said painting belongs to the collection of paintings of Shen, an album leaf mounted as a hand scroll. The collection includes landscapes and said to be part of the Ming Dynasty of China (1500s). Drawing is through ink on paper or ink and light color on paper. The word collection here refers to a subset of his entire collection, a group of album leaves mounted together as one hand scroll that is now known only by a contemporary record of it. Currently, the said work by Shen is located at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missuori, U.S. (38.7 60.2 cm.), purchased by Nelson Trust (46-51/2).


          Mongol rule ended with the establishment of a native Chinese dynasty, known as the Ming. The court immediately established the royal painting academy, which attracted mostly the bird and flower painters and the landscape artists of the Ma-Xia school. The most significant work, however, continued to originate among the literati. The leading group of Ming wenren, called the Wu school, produced a number of important artists, the most notable being Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming. Both were cultured gentlemen and worked at painting and calligraphy. They incorporated the work of the four famous Yuan masters into their own individual styles. Shen Zhou’s brushstrokes possess a crispness of line that gives a distinct clarity to his paintings. His themes were often drawn from events in daily life, such as a moon-gazing party on a small terrace.

          The Ming dynasty scholar-painter combined nature poetry with landscape painting as well as music. Shen's well-known large scale album leaf, Poet on a Mountain Top, portrays a fusion of the poet-painter who is himself standing on a cliff gazing out at his own poem. The scholar alone in nature seems to be looking out not over a chasm of rocks and clouds, but directly at the poem that is before him. The poem, as translated, goes as follows:

White clouds sash-like
wrap mountain waists,
The rock terrace flies in space,
distant, a narrow path.
Leaning on a bramble staff,
far and free I gaze,
To the warble of valley brook
I will reply, whistling.

          Shen Zhou exemplified literati painting in another way -- his blending of poetry and painting, the arts of words and images. Many of Shen Zhou's paintings include poems of his own -- many also include poems composed by friends. Shen Zhou, leader of the painting circle then, engaged himself in painting and poetry creation for a long time. Most of his works before his 40 years of age were small-sized pictures and later, large paintings. He achieved mastery through a comprehensive study of others, such as Huang Tijian in calligraphy, Bai Juyi and Su Shi in poetry and then established his own style. The features of fine brushwork are manifested in his freehand paintings through bold and vigorous strokes and the use of ink color, thus named as "Delicate Shen". Shen Zhou was also excellent at flowers and figures that impress people with simple, bold and vivid strokes. "Wu Men School" was formed under his influence, so he had a great reputation in painting art then.

          Though he did not hold office during his time, he was still well respected as an artist. He is portrayed as being quite content to live withdrawn from active involvement in government affairs beyond the rural district where he served as a tax captain. Wang Ao's account of Shen Zhou's distinguished friends does imply the bridging of a social gulf. He writes: "Famous people of that era all humbled themselves to become friends with him. From commissioners of ministries to great men of the commanderies and districts, all were received as his guests." Shen Zhou was respected by leading officials because of his erudition and strong character, but they nevertheless leave the impression that his reputation as an extremely talented painter, poet, and calligrapher contributed to his popularity. Even though Shen was not a member of the governing elite, his outstanding artistic talent contributed to the willingness of powerful officials to associate with them. An art theory emphasizing artistic freedom and spirituality may not have coincided perfectly with reality, but it seems to have fostered a mystique that helped artists gain respectful treatment as well as commissions. The gentry honored contemporary painters and their works in part as a means of identification with the spiritual qualities that many of the most famous artists were said to possess. This identification was achieved both by acquiring the paintings of such artists and by associating with them socially, and it added a significant component to the overall function and meaning of any given artwork. Not only could a person signal his or her identification with certain artists by commissioning or otherwise obtaining their paintings, associates could also validate this identification by giving the person works by those artists.

          In our quest for what makes a painting Chinese, the quality of pictorial form seems even more elusive than the character of the content. We seek in vain for terms which will suggest that union of the vital and the abstract which is so vividly present in Chinese pictorial motifs. To apply the terms "ideal," "life-rhythm" or "self-expression" to Chinese form is quite as misleading as to attach "subjective" or "romantic" to Chinese content. The Chinese employed terms taken from the associated arts of poetry and calligraphy, or, when specifically trying to express the inexpressible of painting, they resorted to the terms of mysticism, which is as it should be. Shen is regarded for his extremely broad range of styles. Though his work was said to be a plagiarized imitations of the Yuan paintings, his still emulates a degree of originality, and as such portrays the much misunderstood notion of Chinese practice of copying the old masters. Shen Zhou preserves the basic Ni Zan formula: sparse trees growing beside a river, with earthy, lumpy hills beyond. Much of Ni Zan technique remains. Innovations were used in developing his technique. To create landscapes, he used a wet brush. Except in the silhouettes of distant ranges, the brush stroke takes the place of washes. He also used flat color contrary to that of the Chang Lu or Lu Chi. The subjects are humble everyday scenes, presented objectively, neatly, dispassionately.

          The collections of Shen Zhou included a work by the official Xia Chang, who was renowned for his paintings of bamboo, a plant endowed in Chinese culture with the virtues of a sage like gentleman. Shen’s ability to capture fully the inner meaning of each subject is praised, even in his most cursive renderings. This critical climate and the pressures to produce large numbers of paintings may have encouraged some artists to do works that were merely cursory, but it also challenged painters to create highly expressive shorthand renderings.

          The mystique of the spiritually superior artist was connected, in part, with a body of criticism praising amateurs at the expense of professionals although the theoretical "rules" were often stretched to attribute the finest amateur traits to professionals. It should be acknowledged, however, that critics during the fifteenth century, unlike those of earlier and later periods, seldom disparaged professional painters, so they were probably not trying to legitimize professional painters by portraying them as being amateurs or much like them. The present state of knowledge about fifteenth-century China is too limited to warrant a conclusion about whether collecting contemporary art objects and antiques was already a "necessary part of the elite persona" that it became in subsequent centuries; yet it was certainly an important element, a complex cultural phenomenon worth further analysis.

Bibliography

Clunas, Craig. “Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China.” The Art Bulletin 84 no. 4 (2002)           686+

Cohn, William. Chinese Painting. London: Phaidon, 1948

Liscomb, Maurean Kathlyn. “Social Status and Art Collecting: The Collections of Shen Zhou and Wang           Zhen.” The Art Bulletin 78 no. 1 (1996) 111+

Rowley, George. Principles of Chinese Painting. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1959