Scholar in the Wind

Ren Xun first studied painting with his elder brother, Ren Xiong (1820–1857), but his brother's death, when Xun was twenty-two, cut short the apprenticeship. Three years later he found patrons in Suzhou, and by the 1870s his fame had spread throughout the Yangzi River delta region and he had attracted a number of disciples. He maintained an active career until 1887, when deterioratiing eyesight forced him to curtail painting.

In executing figures, Ren often followed Zhejiang artists' regional preference for the style of Ming dynasty professional painters of the so-called Zhe School: dashing virtuoso brushwork and large-scale figures drawn in animated outline strokes set within sketchy inkwash landscapes. Ren employed that style here to suggest a wintry gale pulling at the bare tree branches and whipping through the heavy robes of an intrepid stroller. The figure may be Ren's dramatic evocation of the plight of the traditional gentleman in the face of modernization. His dramatic brush style uses rapidly turning, modulated contour lines to convey graphically the twisting and fluttering folds of the scholar's garment, giving the figure a powerful sense of immediacy.