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Spring outing

• Artist

  Shen Zhou

• Year

  1483

• Media

  Handscroll (section), ink on paper

• Dimensions

  34 x 356 cm

• Museum No.

  XB1992.0030

• Artist Bio

  Shen Zhou was regarded as founder of the Wu School. Among his many students were Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin and Qiu Ying — the three and their mentor were collectively known as the Four Masters of the Ming dynasty. This handscroll reveals a similarity in brushwork and composition to the style of Ni Zan of the fourteenth century.

• Description

  Ni Zan, style name Yunlin, was one of the Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty. He was a good friend of Huang Gongwang and his paintings show some of Huang’s influence. His favourite subject is the landscape around Lake Tai in Jiangsu, painted using the “folded belt texture stroke”. There is often a sparse touch in his composition, such as a lone pavilion and a few trees. The brush strokes tend to be light, dry and uncluttered, and he seldom uses colour diffusion in his works.

  The beginning section of this scroll by Shen Zhou shows a combination of the styles of Huang Gongwang and Ni Zan. The “long hemp-fibre texture stroke” of the rocks and hills is typical of Huang, while the dry, crisp brushwork should come from Ni. At the same time, the dark horizontal dots painted with an oblique brush tip at random are also reminiscent of Ni. But Ni rarely paints figures in his landscapes, and here Shen demonstrates the stylistic feature of his Wu School: the middle section of the scroll has several cottages with bamboo fences, and there is human activity inside. They suggest the idealised way of life of the literati at the time. The creek in front of the cottages guides our eyes to the large patch of water in the distance, done in the technique of liubai, or “negative space”. Here Shen is re-interpreting Ni’s quiet riverside in a horizontal composition. Towards the end of the scroll, Shen adopts more of the stylistic features of Ni, as seen in the sparsely scattered bare trees, and rocks painted in the “folded belt texture strokes”.

• —Xubaizhai Collection, Hong Kong Museum of Art

• More information
  Hong Kong Museum of Art Google Arts & Culture