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Course: Art of Asia > Unit 2
Lesson 16: Qing dynasty (1644–1912)- Qing dynasty (1644–1911), an introduction
- Wang Shimin, Cloud Capped Mountains and Misty Riverside
- Bada Shanren, Lotus and Ducks
- Gong Xian, Eight Views of Landscape
- Wang Shishen, Garden scene album leaves
- Zhao Zhiqian, Flowers Album
- Portraits of Shi Wenying and Lady Guan
- Imperial Workshop and Giuseppe Castiglione, The Qianlong Emperor as Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom
- Landscape: tea sipping under willows
- Ren Xiong, Self-Portrait
- The European Palaces of the Qianlong Emperor, Beijing
- Chinese export silver, a 19th-century Torah case
- Lacquer box decorated with images of Spring and longevity
- Zisha “Ru Ding” teapot, Yixing ware
- Vase of bottle shape with “garlic” mouth
- Européenerie on a Chinese Table Screen
- “One Hundred Birds” hanging scroll
- Summer chaofu (formal court dress) for a top-rank prince
- Hua Yan, Pheasant, Bamboo and Chrysanthemum
- Xunling, The Empress Dowager Cixi with foreign envoys’ wives
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Zhao Zhiqian, Flowers Album
Zhao Zhiqian, Flowers Album, 1862 (Qing dynasty), album leaves, China (Shanghai Museum, China)
A conversation between Dr. Kristen Loring Brennan and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(jazzy piano music) - [Kristen] So here we
are in the Shanghai Museum looking at an album of paintings
by the artist Zhao Zhiqian. - [Steven] This artist was part of the Shanghai School of
Painting during the Qing dynasty. And we're seeing eight pages,
each with both a painting and a poetic inclusion, beautifully rendered with calligraphy. - [Kristen] When we talk about schools, it's just a loose way
of talking about artists who are active at a
particular place in time. Among these professional artists active in 19th century Shanghai,
many of them were interested in calligraphy and looking
back at engravings on stone. - [Steven] For people whose
eyes are trained to look at Chinese calligraphy
you can see that archaize in quality, in the brushstrokes that make up the characters here. - [Kristen] They seem very square. They have a lot of horizontal movements. They seem as if they've been drawn from something carved on stone. - [Steven] So by the 19th century, you have this self-conscious
cultural moment that is thinking about
the 5,000 year history of Chinese culture. - [Kristen] He's even referencing that through his painting style as well, picking up this idea of painting
the bird and flower genre, and also some more modern day subjects. Radishes, cabbages, not just
the more famous garden flowers like peonies. - [Steven] One of the images
that has a long inscription also includes plum blossoms, which are among the most
traditional subjects. The plum blossom is among
the first flowers of spring and it exists only for a moment. And so is often expressive
of the ephemeral. - [Kristen] And it's a
favorite among calligraphers because typically it's
painted in monochrome, meaning just black ink and
the lines of the branch and of the plum blossoms
are like calligraphy. - [Steven] And I love the way that the plum blossom
frames the calligraphy. The way in which there's
such a beautiful integration on this page between
the text and the image. The image almost becomes text and the text has its own
lyrical aesthetic beauty and is very much image. - [Kristen] In fact, in his inscription, he's mentioning the flying white stroke that you can see starting at
the upper left corner dragged where the brush is moving so quickly that it's barely touching the page, making a quick sharp turn to the right, and then back down again - [Steven] There is that
beautiful sense of spontaneity, that this is not something
that can be planned and then offsetting that pure black ink are those brilliant red seals. - [Kristen] That the
end of the inscription is the artist's seal,
oftentimes many of these artists in the Shanghai school were interested in seal carving, as well. That too is an art form. - [Steven] And so we have
writing, printing, and painting. - [Kristen] The other
thing that we see often in these Shanghai School
artists in the 19th century is the vibrant, saturated use of color. - [Steven] A great example of that is the traditional subject of the peonies, which is also part of this series. Here, you get a sense of the
modernity of his approach. The flower itself, although it
has a great sense of volume, is also painted in a very flat way. The leaves turn beautifully,
but they're also flat color. - [Kristen] Little
touches of black are added on top of the color
itself, shaping the leaves, shaping every petal layered
one on top of the other. And in fact, the entire blossom seems to take up a lot more of the
composition than we've seen in earlier renditions of the same subject. - [Steven] We are standing
very close to this flower, but instead of the minute
detail that we might have seen in earlier paintings, there is a broadness of the strokes that feels very modern - [Kristen] And the
vigor of the brush stroke the lavish use of color,
lavish use of water, all of this pushing the bounds
of what might have been seen as refined or restrained in earlier times. - [Steven] So the expressive
qualities in the painting just as it is in the
strokes of the characters and in the seal. - [Kristen] And this is
important too, to keep in mind who these artists were painting for. Many of these artists,
Zhao Zhiqian himself, were professional artists. They would paint not only for themselves and for their friends but
they would also be painting to sell their works. So they were painting
works that were visually alluring and marketable. (jazzy piano music)