Shen Zhou, the quintessential Ming scholar-amateur painter, preferred to live in retirement rather than risk the vicissitudes of government service. He devoted much of his later life to an exploration of the brush style of the fourteenth-century recluse-painter Wu Zhen. Shen's painting epitomizes the scholar-amateur tradition of self-expression; by depicting the interior world of the mind and heart, it embodies the essence of Chinese artistic striving. The painting's imagery is about private places: secluded dwellings hidden in the heart of the landscape. Shen's calligraphic brushwork, like handwriting, subtly conveys the writer's mind and personality. Shen's most ambitious landscape composition—the scroll is over fifty-six feet long—it shows the artist systematically reinterpreting Wu Zhen's brush idiom while striving for a new compositional monumentality.
The painting remained incomplete at Shen Zhou's death. In 1546 it was rediscovered by Shen's illustrious pupil Wen Zhengming, who added finishing touches. Wen's inscription recounts: "The composition was already fully realized, but the dotting and washing had not been completed. I, his student, have now finished it. But consider my clumsy effort, how could I add to this 'sable tail'!"
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Artwork Details
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明 沈周 、文徵明 合璧山水圖 卷
Title:Joint Landscape
Artist:Shen Zhou (Chinese, 1427–1509)
Artist: Wen Zhengming (Chinese, 1470–1559)
Period:Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Date:ca. 1509 and 1546
Culture:China
Medium:Handscroll; ink on paper
Dimensions:Image: 14 1/2 in. × 56 ft. 8 13/16 in. (36.8 × 1729.3 cm) Overall with mounting: H. 16 in. (40.6 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Purchase, The Dillon Fund Gift, 1990
Accession Number:1990.54
Inscription: Artist's inscription and signature (25 columns in semi-cursive script, dated 1546)
Mr. Wang Yuqing has obtained a handscroll painting by Master Shen Shitian [Shen Zhou] consisting of eleven sections of paper joined together to make a single painting of sixty feet. The composition was already fully realized, but the dotting and washing had not been completed. [I], Zhengming was his student; I was the one who finished it. But considering my clumsy effort, how could I add to this "sable tail!" I remember back in 1489 visiting the master [Shen Zhou] at the Shuang’e monk retreat and watching him paint Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River. I was full of admiration. The master laughed and said, "This is retribution for past sins; how can you consider it anything at all?" He never thought of his art as something to give him a name. But I was with him a long time; I could not help but understand his real meaning. He believed that basic to the style of painting is the realization of the compositional design, yet it is the spirit-rhythm life-movement that must give a sense of wonder. Compositional design is readily attained, but spirit-rhythm is a different perfection. That is nothing one can teach. On another occasion, writing on my small painting after Jing [Hao] and Guan [Tong], he said "you can't just take Jing and Guan and say you have a painting style; only when art comes from within do you have rivers and mountains." The praise was rather excessive and really suggested inadequacy. That was some fifty years ago. Shen Zhou has already been gone for a long time. Now people consider that I am a good painter. They think that somehow I can continue as the master. This is indeed like the old saying that respect was asked where there was no Buddha. The wonder in the design of this scroll is all the master's. As for the spirit-rhythm, how can I supply any! Inscribed by Wen Zhengming of the later generation on the fifteenth of the fourth month of the bingwu year in the Jiajing reign era (1546) at the age of seventy-seven sui.
[Translation by Maxwell K. Hearn based on that in Richard Edwards et al.. The Art of Wen Zhengming (1470–1559). Exh. cat. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1976, cat. no. 3, p. 38. Slightly modified.]
[ Wan-go H. C. Weng , New York, until 1990; sold to MMA]
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Chinese Galleries: An Inaugural Installation," 1997.
Princeton University Art Museum. "Brush, Implication & Consequence-landscape of Ming and Qing [Ch'ing] China (1368–1911)," April 4, 1998–June 14, 1998.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Traditional Scholarly Values at the End of the Qing Dynasty: The Collection of Weng Tonghe (1830–1904)," June 30–January 3, 1999.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Chinese Painting, Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection," August 28, 2004–February 20, 2005.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bridging East and West: The Chinese Diaspora and Lin Yutang," September 15, 2007–February 10, 2008.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632–1717)," September 9, 2008–January 4, 2009.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Arts of the Ming Dynasty: China's Age of Brilliance," January 23–September 13, 2009.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Yuan Revolution: Art and Dynastic Change," August 21, 2010–January 9, 2011.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Chinese Gardens: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats," August 18, 2012–January 6, 2013.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Learning to Paint in Premodern China," February 18, 2023–January 7, 2024.
Suzuki Kei 鈴木敬, ed. Chûgoku kaiga sogo zuroku: Daiikan, Amerika-Kanada Hen 中國繪畫總合圖錄: 第一卷 アメリカ - カナダ 編 (Comprehensive illustrated catalog of Chinese paintings: vol. 1 American and Canadian collections) Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1982, pp. 74–75, cat. no. A13-033.
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