handout 19

Ming dynasty (1368-1644) Suzhou 苏州 , garden city in southern China

I. Concept: space, place, landscape

One might think, then, of space, place, and landscape as a dialectical triad, a conceptual structure that may be activated from several different angles. If a place is a specific location, a space is a "practiced place," a site activated by movements, actions, narratives, and signs, and a landscape is that site encountered as image or "sight." (WJT Mitchell, preface)

II. Structures in Sima Guang's Garden of Solitary Enjoyment (Dule yuan)

• Reading Hall ( dushu tang ). Dong Zhongshu (c. 179-c. 104 BCE) was a Western Han scholar who promoted Confucianism as the state orthodoxy.

• Pavilion for Playing with Water ( nongshui xian ). Du Mu (803-852) was a late Tang poet and essayist.

• Fishing Hut ( diaoyu an ). Yan Guang was a lifelong friend of Emperor Han Guangwu (25-56 CE).

• Studio for Planting Bamboo ( zhongzhu zhai ). Wang Huizhi (d. 388) is son of the famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi (321-379), and a famous calligrapher in his own right.

• Plot for Picking Herbs ( caiyao pu ). Han Kang was an herb seller in the market at Chang'an during the Eastern Han dynasty.

• Pavilion for Watering Flowers ( jiaohua ting ). The great Tang poet Bo Juyi (772-846).

• Terrace for Seeing Mountains ( jianshan tai) . The name alludes to a couplet by the most revered of all Chinese hermit-poets, Tao Qian: “Picking chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge, I catch sight of the southern mountains.”

III. Objects

primary image:

Qiu Ying 仇英 . Garden for Self-Enjoyment 獨樂園圖 . Handscroll, ink and light color on silk; 27.8 x 381 cm. Accompanying text of an essay together with seven poems of Sima Guang and one poem of Su Shi written by Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) in 1558.

supplementary/comparative images:

Li Gonglin (ca. 1041-1106). The Classic of Filial Piety , Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), ca. 1085. Handscroll, ink on silk; various dimensions. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Su Hanchen (active Southern Song). Lady at Her Dressing Table on a Garden Terrace . Round fan mounted as album leaf, ink, color and gold on silk; 23.4 x 24.1 cm. Boston MFA.

Anonymous. Figures by a lake and distant mountain . Song dynasty. Mounted fan, ink and color on silk; H. 23.8, W. 25.2 cm. Freer Sackler, Washington, D.C..

Wang Xizhi (303-361). Preface to The Orchid Pavilion Collection (detail) 353. Rubbing of the Dingwu version.

Anonymous. Illustrations to Tao Qian's prose poem ‘Homecoming.' Southern Song dynasty. 13th century. Handscroll, ink and color on silk; 30 x 438.6 cm. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Anonymous. Sparrows, Bamboo, and Plum Blossoms . Southern Song. Fan mounted as album leaf, ink and color on silk. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Anonymous. Bird on a Loquat Tree . Southern Song. Fan mounted as album leaf, ink and color on silk. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Attributed to Zhou Fang (c. 740-800). Ladies Wearing Flowers in their Hair . Song-dynasty copy. Handscroll, ink and color on silk; 46 x 180 cm. Liaoning Provincial Museum.

Qian Xuan (ca. 1235-after 1301). Pear Blossoms . Late Song to early Yuan, probably after 1279. Handscroll, ink and color on paper; 31.1 x 95.5 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Anonymous (11th century?). A Noble Scholar Under a Willow . Hanging scroll, ink and color on silk; 25 3/8 x 15 3/4 inches. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Ma Yuan (active ca. 1190–1225). Viewing Plum Blossoms by Moonlight . Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink and color on silk; 25.1 x 26.7 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Qian Xuan (ca. 1235-after 1301). Wang Xizhi Watching Geese . Handscroll, ink, color, gold on paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Xie Huan (ca. 1370-1450), after. Literary Gathering in Apricot Garden. 1437. Handscroll, ink, colors, silk; 14 1/2 x 7'8” (fig. 8-5)

Du Jin 杜谨 (1465-1509), att. Enjoying Antiquities. Hanging scroll, ink, color, silk; 49 5/8 x 6'1 1/3” (fig. 8-38)

IV. Texts

a) Xiang Yukui colophon on Qiu Ying's painting

The painting of The Garden for Self Enjoyment on the right by Shizhou, Master Qiu [Ying], is in the style of Li [Gonglin]. Its mood is peaceful, as if meeting the ancient gentleman face to face among the brushes and silk; it lifts one above the sordid bustle of life. (Ho, 206).

b) Wang Xizhi (303-61). Orchid Pavilion Preface

“When I consider what it was that aroused the emotions of writers past, it is [the impermanence of life]. Sighing with grief I bend over my writings. I am unable to express the feelings in my heart. I know only that to equate death and life is but an empty affectation, and to pretend to aspire to an early death is a lie. Future writers shall view us as we view those who passed before us. How sad it is!” (Wen, 38).

c) Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian, 365-427). “Peach Blossom Spring”

A fisherman from Wuling was boating along a stream one day, “unconscious of the distance he had traveled, when he saw a dense grove of blossoming peach trees lining each bank for hundreds of paces. No tree of any other kind stood among them, but there were fragrant flowers, delicate and lovely to the eye, and the air was filled with drifting peach bloom.” The fisherman, in amazement, stopped to investigate, and discovered a spring at the end of the grove, and a cave into a hill from which faint light seemed to emanate. When he passed through the cave, “he emerged into the open light of day. He faced a spread of level land. Imposing buildings stood among rich fields and pleasant ponds all set with mulberry and willow, linking paths led everywhere, and the fowls and dogs of one farm could be heard from the next. People were coming and going and working in the fields… White-haired elders and tufted children alike were cheerful and contented…” (Birch, 167-68).

d) Qian Xuan inscription on Pear Blossoms

All alone by the veranda railing, her teardrops drench the branches,

Her face is unadorned, but her old beauty remains.

Behind the locked gate, on a rainy night, how she is filled with sadness,

How differently she looked bathed in golden waves of moonlight, before the darkness fell.

(Wen Fong and Maxwell K Hearn, 1982, p. 36 modified by Barnhart, 1983, p. 40).

e) Bai Juyi (722-846) on Lake Tai ( taihu ) rocks

Though we cannot imagine the place it whence it comes,

There was surely some agency in its ascent from the deep,

In dragging it up from the courts of the aquatic emperor,

In placing it here, against our courtyard bank.

Facing it, we chant our poems.

Gazing, we lift our cup of wine… (Hay, 21)

V. Bibliography

Barnhart, Richard. Peach Blossom Spring: Gardens and Flowers in Chinese Paintings . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983.

Birch, Cyril, trans. Anthology of Chinese Literature . New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Clunas, Craig. Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China . Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.

Harrist, Robert. Painting and Private Life in Eleventh-century China: ‘Mountain Villa' by Li Gonglin . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Hay, John. Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art . New York: China House Gallery and China Institute in America, 1985.

Ho, Wai-kam, et. al., eds. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting . Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.

Laing, Ellen Johnston. “Qiu Y ing's Depiction of Sima Guang's Duluo Yuan [sic] and the View from the Chinese Garden." Oriental Art 33 (1987): 375-380.

Mitchell, W.J.T. "Preface to the second edition of Landscape and power .” In Landscape and Power , 2nd edition, x-xi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Wen Fong, Robert Harrist, eds. The Embodied Image : Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.