Xin' an Celebrations of Seclusion Leaf 1

Consisting of paintings and calligraphies by six Xin’an painters, the album was put together in 1922 by Deng Shi, founder of the Shanghai publishing house Shenzhou Guoguang She, and showcases the painting school’s stylistic diversity as well as its thematic disposition to seclusion and Mount Huang. Bolstered by a prosperity ushered in by the local merchants, the Huizhou area was able to compete with Suzhou and Huating as a cultural stronghold in the late Ming and early Qing. Distinguished for picturing placidity with simple and unassuming brushwork, the Xin’an painters became a legitimate painting school in Chinese art following their discussion with reference to the Tiandu School by Gong Xian in the early Qing.

A foremost exponent of the Xin’an School and primarily a follower of Ni Zan was Monk Hongren, a native of Xiuning who took Buddhist vows upon the demise of the Ming dynasty. The leaves “Ravine” and “Bamboos” in the present album actually originated from a 1664 album he painted for Wang Dezhang (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), in which two distinctive styles are employed to represent a variety of landforms. In the leaf “Rocks”, for instance, the composition is simple and texture is conveyed by dry strokes to the exclusion of washes. In contrast, washes characterize the leaves “Ravine” and “Bamboos”, the rocks of which are geometrically outlined and densely dotted. Whichever the treatment, the painter’s distinct sparseness exudes to attest to the eclectic style he achieved in his mature late years.

Like his close friend Monk Hongren, Xiao Yuncong, a native of Wuhu, relinquished any ambition to serve the Qing court and relished in literature instead. Some of his paintings have survived in the form of woodblock prints. As for the leaf featuring a party of five transporting a plum tree that has apparently just been uprooted in the present album, it is learned from the self-inscription that it was originally produced as a set of twelve in the styles of Song and Yuan masters between the 1st and the 7th days in the 1st lunar month of the bingshen year (1656). The vigorous brushwork and the unadorned motifs combine to conjure archaism for the painting.

A friend of not only Monk Hongren but also Xiao Yuncong, Zheng Min, a native of Shexian, excelled in painting, calligraphy and Neo- Confucian studies. In the lightly coloured leaf entitled “Picking Oak Acorns”, a scholar is approaching a thriving oak tree with a basket in one hand and a staff in the other. In another leaf, inscribed with a verse line by the Tang poet Meng Haoran that describes a breezy spring, the scene portrayed with a dry brush is so simple and serene that it can easily be taken for an excerpt from a landscape by either Ni Zan or Huang Gongwang. Both of these two leaves betray the painter’s inclination towards seclusion and demonstrate his masterly control of dampness and tonal gradations.

Han Zhu, a native of Huizhou, was a poet and a painter of especially landscapes in splashed ink with affinities to Mi Fu. Similar in dampness and palette, the two leaves “Qiyun Mountain” and “Shixin Peak” may have come from an album of Mount Huang. The stone bridge spanning between two cliffs and shaded by a pine tree in the former leaf is commonly seen in paintings of the scenic spot.

Relatively the most recent of all the painters of the album is Huang Lü, a native of Tandu, Shexian. His father Huang Sheng was a preeminent etymologist active at the cusp of the dynasties Ming and Qing while he himself was said to possess the four beauties of poetry, painting, calligraphy and seal carving. When chancing on the painter’s two leaves in the album generations later, then in the collection of Deng Shi, his kinsman Huang Binhong marveled at their appealingly refreshing palette and thought it a shame that such an accomplished painter had been overshadowed by Wen Boren.