CLP 62: 2004 “Representations of Gardens in Chinese Painting.” Asia Society, New York

“Representations of Gardens in Chinese Painting.”
Lecture for Asia Society, New York, April 29, 2004.

I should clarify at the outset the topic of my lecture. I won't be talking about gardens--not qualified. Or even about what ptgs tell us about old gardens--or only a little of that. My topic is, rather, the different manners and forms in which gardens are represented in China, and what kind of visual information each of these forms gives us. My hope is that with the really informative paintings identified and established, others can make use of them for reconstructing the layout and features of great old gardens--that would make a very interesting and valuable book, but I'm not the one to write it.

What is basic aim of artist who does a garden painting? It isn't, I think, primarily to provide information about the garden; usually the ptg is done for the garden's owner, who doesn't need to be told that. Rather, it's to commemorate the garden, honor it as a portrait does the sitter; it provides the owner with something to show guests, for them to admire. And typically, it aims at evoking in the viewer an experience that is somehow analagous, or congruent, to the experience one has of visiting the garden. Artist presents visual materials, images that are recognizable as representing things and spaces of garden, arranging these so as to structure the viewer's experience, again in a way analagous to the way one experiences a garden.

Think of the defining characteristics of a garden:

- Enclosure; the sense of security if offers, or escape from the troubles and dangers of the outside world.

- Order, or organization: the arrangement of materials and spaces--trees, rocks, bodies of water, buildings--into a designed piece of terrain.

- The making and placing of certain arrangements or objects (jing, "scenes") to evoke memories, either of literary and historical themes and events, or of some themes or events in the life of the owner--and the poetic naming of these.

- The arrangement of all these so as to encourage certain ways of moving through the garden, or being in it, experiencing and enjoying it.

Now, what of all this is transferable, so to speak, from one medium to another? From garden to painting, that is. But of course it was a two-way relationship: the design of gardens followed in some respects the conventions of painting. From the time of the Yuan Ye by Ji Cheng, written between 1631 and 1634, the earliest and most informative treatise on gardens in China, the idea that a garden should be like a painting is expressed over and over. A person who built a garden thought of himself as inhabiting a work of art, with all the attendant sense of transcending the real world. Close affinities between gardens and paintings affirmed and enhanced this feeling. Garden designers were often also painters.

Simple answer to question of what is transferable: it depends on how you use the medium of ptg--what form you choose, and how you employ that form.

An aesthetic experience, as a general category to which a visit to a garden belongs, has certain characteristics: it stands somewhat apart from our everyday, routine experience; it has a beginning and an end; and it is structured somehow within that: theme and variations, building to climax and subsiding, and so forth.

Thee are many other ways one can think about garden: Craig Clunas's "Fruitful Sites," as a profitable piece of land, with orchards and edible or otherwise valuable plants; as display of wealth, way of impressing guests; as site for love affairs and other kinds of human interaction--all imposed by usage owners make of it. All these relevant, but too much to encompass in a single lecture. So, on to paintings.

Essentially three models, for which three standard forms that Ch. ptgs commonly take are appropriate.

A. Single, comprehensive view of garden, in hanging scroll. (Possible also in tall handscroll, not too long, so that it can be viewed all at once.) In these, garden laid out like map, seen from high vantage point. As if artist led you to nearby high hill, pointed out the features of garden visible from there.

B. Handscroll or horizontal scroll could provide pictorial analogue to more continuous, linear experience of entering garden, typically through gate seen at beginning of scroll, strolling through it and seeing its principal features, then leaving through another gate at end of scroll. As if artist led you through, directing your attention to important sights along the way.

C. Album can offer series of views, twelve or twenty or more, of "scenes" in garden--pavilions, ponds, rockeries, etc.--frequently with the name of each inscribed on the leaf. To continue my fanciful account, as if artist blindfolded you and took you through garden, turning you in right direction and taking off blindfold briefly so you can look at some designated "scene," while he tells you the name of it.

S,S. Fine example of first type is this anon. Ming (15-16c) horizontal painting that went through auction here a decade ago; don't know its present ownership. Detailed, technically high-level portrait of riverside garden, complete with owner and servants, and some indications of what its best features were-- row of bonsai, flowering trees, table with seats, preparations for visitors. But shows us only part of garden closest to us; rest hidden behind buildings and trees.

S,S. A painting by the early 18th cent. master Yuan Jiang in which the villa and garden are seen in an expansive setting; again, much of garden hidden from viewer's gaze. If you raise the vantage point and lay it all out, as in this large album leaf by the late Ming Qian Gu, you communicate more of the layout, but only in a diagrammatic way that doesn't tell much about the individual parts.

S,S. In this very fine painting by Wang Hui, done in 1717 and owned by Guy and Marie Helene Weill, we see a bird's eye view of the recipient's house and garden in a spacious setting; the garden is not the artist's main concern, so only a little of it is shown.

S,S. Turning to the handscroll, we can note that a short handscroll can be spread out to present a single, all-encompassing view of the garden. The earliest extant portrayal specifically of a garden, the picture of the Shizi Lin or Lion Grove garden by Ni Zan and Zhao Yuan, painted in 1373 and now lost and viewable only in old photographs, is of this type. We can also read it, however, from right to left, the common way of viewing a handscroll, entering the gate, moving through the trees and buildings, and at the end climbing the artificial mountain-rockery to the monk's hut atop it, meant to represent a retreat at the top of a towering mountain. Ni Zan and Zhao Yuan were reportedly involved in the planning of the garden; this picture presumably records their plan.

--S. The Yusong or "Friend of the Pines" Garden is portrayed in a short handscroll by its owner, the early Ming literatus-painter Du Qiong. At the opening of the scroll he is shown sitting with a guest, a high official, at the entrance to his house,

S,S. And in the remainder (see in bad slides taken by myself) he appears again with a different guest, walking toward a table where servants are preparing things to eat and drink. Nearby are potted bonsai; a railing marks the further limit of the garden; and at the end, again, is an artificial mountain that offers, through a cave door, escape into a world in miniature. where they can sit by the pond and listen to the waterfall, or visit a miniature Buddhist temple. Here we learn more than usually, and first-hand from the owner, about how the garden was experienced and enjoyed.

S,S. This type, the short handscroll offering a comprehensive view, is seen at its best in a high-technique portrayal of the Dong Yuan or East Garden by Yuan Jiang, one of whose specialties was paintings of this kind. We not only understand from it the whole layout of the garden, but

-- S. we can move in for closer views, since the artist's meticulous rendering permits this-- his picture and Du Qiong's differ in the way of high-resolution and low-resolution photos. (I am not suggesting a difference in quality--most Chinese connoisseurs would much rather own Du Qiong's scroll.)

-- S. Moving in still closer, we see the master of the garden and his guest sitting on the verandah of his house looking out at the courtyard with flowering trees.

S,S. A long handscroll by the great Ming master Qiu Ying in the Cleveland Museum preserves the composition of a Song-period scroll depicting the Du Lo Yuan or "Garden of Solitary Pleasure" in Loyang, owned by the great 11th century statesman and historian Sima Guang. Sima Guang retired there in protest against the policies of the reformer Wang Anshi, and composed an essay about the garden which is the basis for the painting. Here the handscroll form is used to depict successive parts or features of the garden in a sequential way, with no attempt at uniting them into a spatial continuum or showing how they relate in space. This painting and the garden have been written about often, so I will skip over it quickly.

S,S. Another long handscroll ascribed to the same Qiu Ying, this one in the Nanjing Museum, offers another kind of sequential presentation of a garden, whether imaginary or real we can't say--seen from an elevated viewpoint, as if arranged on an upward slope. It's well populated with scholars and servants who act out the ways in which the garden was enjoyed--for instance, in re-enacting the wine-cup-floating scene of the Lan-t'ing or Orchid Pavilion Gathering; the man in the pavilion in the foreground is taking the part of the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi.

S,S. The bird's-eye view gives the effect of passing over the garden, viewing it from a moving, elevated viewpoint. People in a house, one doing calligraphy; others outwide, strolling and reading; at the end, a pond with geese. The kay to uses of a garden is selection: just as you select rocks, trees, buildings etc. to construct your private world, so can you select friends to invite and activities to sponsor, narrowing real experiences to those you choose, instead of those that everyday life thrusts rudely upon you. A universal ideal.

S,S. Some time in the 15th century, it would appear, a new type of garden handscroll composition is invented; the earliest example known to me is this one, ascribed (unfirmly) to Shen Zhou. That it is certainly by an amateur artist is indicated by the difficulty he has connecting the wall to the gate--or rather, he doesn't even try. In this program, one enters the garden through a gate at the beginning, makes one's way through it, observing notable features along the way, and leaves it at the end. Many of this type survive; I'll show only a few briefly. We move through a grove of diverse flowering and other trees,

S,S. Cross a plank bridge, beyond which is a pond over which two dragonflies are flitting, and encounter the host and guest sitting outside the house;

S -- in the entryway to which antiquities are set out for their appreciation; we leave the garden at the end. Seals identify famous owners, from Xiang Yuanbian in the Ming to the late Zhang Xuezeng. These are of course part of the experience of the scroll, but are not our concern tonight.

S,S. An example by the later Ming master Qian Gu, the Qiuzhi Garden portrayed by him in 1564, follows this scheme: entry through a gate, the master and guest strolling through arbors and courtyards, servants here and there, a pond with ducks and geese, a well, exit at the end, where the painter's signature and dedication appear.

S,S. A particularly fine use of this handscroll type was accomplished by Sun Kehong, in a scroll he painted in 1572 representing the Stone Table Garden; it's in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Sun's long inscription for the painting praises this garden as the most beautiful in the region, and relates how the owner, Mr. Lu Ya-shan, planted a long grove of thousands of tall bamboo and placed in the midst of these a large stone table, building a pavilion over it. On nights of the full moon he would assemble his friends there to play games and compose poems. A short passage of bare terrain opens the scroll, with the city wall visible beyond. Inside the gate is a pond and a row of ornamental rocks. (The rocks from Sun Kehong's own garden are still to be seen in a park in Songjiang.)

S,S. Rolling further, we see the Stone Table Pavilion, with Mr. Lu leaning on the railing to watch a servant watering potted plants; behind him on the table are antique bronze vessels, an inkstone, and a case of books. We can imagine the full-moon parties held there, with drinking and games and poems. The profound difference between Japanese and Chinese gardens has often been observed: typical Japanese gardens are mainly for contemplation, as one sits on the verandah and gazes out over them; at most, one strolls along paths or stepping stones, careful not to deviate from the prescribed routes. Chinese gardens are definitely for participation, sometimes quite vigorous, drunken parties etc. Chinese erotic albums usually include scenes of sexual goings-on in gardens; how much of this really happened I can't say, but I could show you lots of pictures of it. (I won't, tonight.) Hard to imagine this happening in a Japanese garden; no furniture of the kind that would make it comfortable, and one would be afraid of upsetting the aesthetic balance. The Chinese garden is more accomodating in this respect.

S,S. The path disappears into a grove of bamboo, and emerges from the back gate of the garden; we see a visitor and his servant leaving. The artist's long inscription follows.

S,S. A brief look at a final example, by the 19th century master Xu Gu, painted in 1834 and executed in his distinctive and sensitive brushwork. The opening shows us guests approaching the garden through flowering trees,

S,S. Inside we see more flowering trees, rockeries, the host waiting for the arrival of his guests, a servant sweeping leaves,

S --. and beyond the house, more trees and the concluding fadeout.

S,S. I will only mention, without being able to follow it through, that the late Ming artist Wu Bin's long handscroll portraying Mi Wanzhong's Shao Garden, painted in 1615, belongs to this type. It was prominently featured in the 1968 China House exhibition "Gardens in Chinese Art" organized by the owner of the scroll, Wango Weng.

S,S. The third form in which gardens are represented in Chinese paintings, the album, typically offers a series of labeled pictures of notable views, or jing, in the garden. No attempt is made to connect these spatially; the garden in this version is an assemblage of designated sights; the visitor moves from one to the next, perhaps with a running account by his host of the meanings behind their titles. An early example, devoted to the Shizi Lin or Lion Grove garden, is attributed (insecurely) to the late Yuan master Xu Ben; another, by Du Qiong (whose handscroll representation of his own garden we saw earlier), was painted in 1443 and represents Tao Congyi's Nancun or "Southern Village" Garden. Both bear written titles identifying the sights.

S,S. An eight-leaf album in the Metropolitan Museum ascribed to Wen Zhengming presents prominent places in the Zhuozheng Yuan or Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician in Suzhou. The album exists in more than one version, and I lean toward accepting another; but authenticity is not, fortunately, our concern tonight. The scenes are, in any case, depicted in a schematic and amateurish manner.

S,S. Finally, an album painted in 1625 by the Songjiang artist Shen Shichong is made up of scenes of his patron Wang Shimin's Jiao Garden.

This completes our fast survey of Chinese garden pictures done in the three standard forms, and the kinds of experiences they convey. Fine as these all might be as works of art, none was adequate to provide comprehensive and believable visual accounts of the gardens, because of obvious problems of spatial disjuncture, limitations of a single vantage point, and conventionalization. But of course that was not their purpose. The feat of leaving these all behind and creating a completely new and (to my knowledge) unparalleled and unrepeated visual record of a great garden was accomplished by the late Ming artist Zhang Hong in his twenty-leaf "Zhi Garden" album. Once divided among four collections, it is now in two: twelve leaves in LACMA, eight in Berlin Museum (former Vannotti).

S,S. Before getting to the album proper, I want to make a few points about Zhang Hong's methods of representation, points I've discussed in various writings about him. First, he took a lot of ideas from European pictures he was able to see, prints chiefly, brought by Jesuit missionaries. At right a leaf from Zhang's "Scenes of Yueh" album painted in 1639; at left, a leaf from Braun and Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Cities of the World, a late 16th century Antwerp publication that is known to have been among the books of engravings to be seen in China in Zhang Hong's time, and one that appears to have fascinated some Chinese artists. (Describe).

Also, in the inscription on this album Zhang writes that when he went to Yueh (present-day Zhejiang) the sights there mostly weren't like what he had read about them; on his return he made this album to record what he had seen, becaus, he writes, depending on your ears isn't as good as depending on your eyes. A remarkable expression, for a Chinese artist, of an intent to adopt a visual approach and report what he sees--for late Ming, a very un-Chinese project.

S,S. A painting of the stone cliff at Mt. Xixia, outside Nanjing, done by Zhang Hong in 1634. From his inscription on this we learn that Zhang went to this place with a friend and viewed the cliff, with its shrine and rock-cut Buddha images, in the rain; and then, when he returned to Suzhou, painted what he had seen. But when I myself went to the place to figure out what Zhang's vantage point might have been, I discovered that there wasn't one--no place he could have stood to get this view. We are back to our imaginary helicopter, or hot-air balloon, the capacity of the artist to render the scene as it would be viewed from a vantage point that is in fact inaccessible to him. Also, Zhang does not, as a traditional Chinese artist would do, depict the notable features of the scene, the rock-cut niches with Buddhas, with unnatural clarity and emphasis; he allows them to merge with their surroundings, much as they would appear to an observor at the place. (I have slides to make this point, but won't show them.)

S,S. Now, at last, to the garden. At right, the first leaf from Zhang's twenty-leaf Zhi Garden album, painted in 1627. He labels it "Complete View of the Zhi Garden," what we would call a bird's-eye view. I put beside it, for contrast, Qian Gu's complete view of the Qiaozhi Garden, not far from Zhang's in time but profoundly different in conception and method. Although Qian Gu also seems to represent the scene from an elevated viewpoint, in the traditional Chinese way, he adheres to the Chinese tradition also in drawing everything in the picture--trees, buildings, rocks--as if seen straight-on, or from only a slight elevation; and there is no diminution from front to back. Zhang's picture breaks sharply with this old tradition. To learn what inspired this daring move, we need only turn to another leaf in the Braun and Hogenberg series,

S --. this one a view of Frankfurt. Both pictures lay out their scenery on a groundplane that is slanted not only upward but also sideward; one of the compilers, Hogenberg as I recall, writes about how the diagonal view of a city is most revealing since it allows one to look down into streets and spaces in a way the straight-on view does not. In both pictures, buildings and trees diminish into distance; in both, walls and boats and other things are shown as looked down on, or looked into.

S --. A detail of Zhang's bird's-eye view reveals these features more clearly. I will use it also to point out a few features of the garden that we will see later in individual leaves. A dike with willows growing on it divides the canal that borders the garden; (etc.--gate, ponds, one with island; bridge, diverging shores with bamboo, large rockery,)

S --. This is a bad photograph made from a diagram drawn from my sketch and printed in the LACMA 1996 publication, issued to accompany an exhibition of the album, titled Paintings of the Zhi Garden by Zhang Hong: Revisiting a Seventeenth Century Chinese Garden, with all leaves reproduced in color and essays by their curator June Li and myself. Unhappily, it sold out very quickly and has little chance of being reprinted--I wish it could be. This diagram shows, superimposed in different colors on a pale reproduction of the bird's-eye view, the area included in each of the leaves, the vantage point from which it is viewed, and the direction of the view. In short, by long perusal I had cracked the code, realized the extraordinary program of the album, and identified the location, scope, and direction of each of the leaves as they appear also in the bird's-eye view. Let me illustrate just how this program works by locating in this way the next four leaves.

S --. Leaf Two (the order and numberings are all mine--they are not written on the leaves) brings us close to the main gate of the garden; we descend, so to speak, to look over the dike with willows and travelers and the canal with boats, to see the nearer wall. There are two gates: one into the main section, another to a separate section of the garden, perhaps used by another family membrer, at the right.

S --. For Leaf Three we move over the wall at a point near this second gate, and view close-up the place of divergence: banks receding left and right, a bridge flanked by a wall, tall bamboo, a small house with two figures in lower right, another house beyond (all this visible, very small, in the bird's-eye view); and at left, a path going back along one of the large ponds.

S --. This same path reappears, along with the walled bridge, at the right of Leaf Four; it leads back to the open building at the far end of this pond. The small island with tingzi or kiosk is seen in lower left, as it is in the bird's-eye view; a covered walkway separates this from the other large pond. So far, the program seems fairly straightforward.

S --. But the leaf I take to be no. Five turns us all around. We are now seated in the pavilion at the far end of this other pond, looking back toward the outer wall of the garden. The covered walkway now runs along the left. And, most amazingly, the tops of two buildings, the main gate and another, which were seen from outside before, now appear above the trees, as they would be seen from inside.

Here we should pause to consider the implications of this program. In my essay I asked rhetorically how we ourselves might make a visual record of a garden that would convey enough information about it to allow an approximate reconstruction of it. "Imagine," I wrote, "that as a specialist in Chinese gardens you are given a single wish by a genie from a lamp, and your wish is to return to some great late Ming garden with a camera and make a series of color photos or slides of it. You are permitted a free choice of vantage points, even unnaturally elevated ones that would today require a helicopter. But the genie has craftily put only a twenty-exposure roll of film in the camera. You would use your initial shot for an all-over, or bird's-eye view, and for the remainder, you would roam over the garden selecting views that together made up a more or less comprehensive portrayal of it, choosing angles of view that were especially revealing. You would make a point of interlocking the photos spatially by including in each some visually identifiable materials--buildings, striking clusters of trees or rocks--that appear also in others. To the same purpose, you would take care that the area covered in each of the photos could be identified within the bird's-eye view."

S --. And that, in effect, is what Zhang Hong has done. (Here in Leaf Six we look leftward at the large rockery behind the first pond.) Or, to put it less anachronistically, it is as if he had gone around the garden holding up a rectangular frame and painting what appeared within it, from a fixed vantage point, without trying to arrange the visual materials into "good compositions." He adopts a determinedly non-literary approach, not even writing identifying labels on the pictures, since, contrary to standard practice, they do not focus on particular designated "scenes" in the garden. And he gives up "strong brushwork"--of which he was eminently capable, when he chose to play that game--in favor of a flexible system combining some line drawing with a pointillist technique of applying ink and rich colors sensitively in rendering the sensory surfaces of the garden's components: water, rocks, blossoming and leafy trees.

S --. Again we look leftward, where a bridge leads from a lattice arbor to a two-storey building; rocks and tall trees will appear in another leaf, seen from a different direction. There is not time to follow through with all the leaves; I think you understand now how the Zhi Garden album works.

The morning after I talked on this album at a symposium held on Chinese gardens in San Francisco, William Wu (a more serious student of Chinese gardens than myself) phoned me to say that he had decided that Zhang Hong didn't understand the Chinese garden. What he meant is that Zhang did not follow, and so presumably did not understand, the traditional system of focusing his leaves on particular, established "scenes"; to de-emphasize these so thoroughly seems to miss the point. I would be inclined to counter-argue that Zhang Hong always knoew what he was doing, and violated conventional practice in order to carry out his project of quasi-objective visual reporting.

Is there any comparable project in Chinese painting?

S,S. The closest I can think of, another systematic attempt to overcome the spatial limitations of Chinese pictorial practice by making multiple representations of a single subject from different vantage points, is in a handscroll by Zhang Hong's somewhat older contemporary Wu Bin, painted around 1610. Wu Bin's patron Mi Wanzhong has just acquired a new an d notable scholar's stone, and the artist records its appearance and shape by depicting it ten times, from ten different angles. The effect is of turning the rock in space and representing how it would look from each angle.

S,S. Like Zhang Hong, Wu Bin breaks the rules for how rocks should be represented and how ink should be applied to the paper. Both projects, un-Chinese and seemingly empirical, would seem to be been inspired by some new knowledge of European pictorial practice, perhaps a series of scientific or architectural illustrations; but no such model that they might have seen has been identified.

S,S. I will conclude with a look at a few more leaves in the Zhi Garden album, using a poor slide of the bird's-eye view. A large buiilding in upper left is screened by tall trees in that, but in the individual leaf, no. fifteen in the series, we see between the trees and realize that it is an audience hall where the master of the garden is talking with a guest. This is the "Great Hall" that Ji Cheng's treatise stipulates every garden must have.

S --. In front of that, as seen in leaf 16, is another courtyard with a rockery and servant women picking flowers; on the open porch of the two-storey building that faces onto it, antiquities are placed on a table; perhaps the master and guest will sit there later to enjoy them and admire the view.

S. -- In what I take to be the last leaf, we have moved again outside the garden and are looking across the canal into it. The building with the porch appears now in upper left; in a nearer building we see again the host and guest talking. We have emerged from the ideal realm of the garden, from which all commerce is banned; the flag of an inn or wineshop is seen in the foreground, and boatman poles his heavy load along the canal. The season is now winter--albums regularly end with winter scenes, and there may well be some seasonal program to the album that will yield to further observation. In a sense, we have followed also the simpler program of the handscroll, entering the garden by the nearer gate, making our way through it, and exiting at the end (another leaf shows the back gate.) The artist's longest inscription, with a date, dedication, and signature is another indication that this is the final leaf.

A great deal more could be said about this album as a work of art, and, now that its mode of pictorial exposition is understood, about the design of the garden. But your tour guide has run out of time. I will conclude by remarking that the Zhi Garden album is the only classical garden of the great period that could, if we had the land and water and other resources, be reconstructed with a high degree of fidelity to the original. And it is Zhang Hong and his highly unorthodox scheme for his album--which he himself, so far as we know, was never to repeat--that are to be thanked for this. Thank you.

Hist. of Art 192A, Undergrad. Seminar, Spring 1995. Slide Show

Shih-tzu Lin or Lion Grove Garden:

- Chao Yüan and Ni Tsan (?), The Lion-grove Garden (Shih-tzu Lin). Handscroll, 1373. Siren Ch.Ptg. VI, 162. Lost; known only from reproductions. Earliest safely datable & attributable garden ptg?

(- Album of scenes of Shih-tzu Lin attrib. to Hsü Pen, d. 1378, Palace Mus., Taipei; but later. Photos.)

- Handscroll by Ch'ien Wei-ch'eng (Ch'ing court artist) ptd. on command of Ch'ien-lung Emp. after CL's southern tour in 1757; CL's insc. dtd. 1774. Sotheby's auction, June 1986, #91.

(- Slides of Shih-tzu Lin taken there. Lots of photos of it in books.)

IV. The Early and Middle Ming

Hsieh Huan, "Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Gathering," 1437. Two versions: col. of Wango Weng; Chen-chiang Museum. Parting colorplt. 2; Smith & Weng; etc.

- Attrib. to him (by style): "The Nine Elders of the Mountain of Fragrance." Handscroll, Cleveland Museum (Eight Dynasties #133).

- Anon. 15-16c (again): A Villa by the River. (Christie's auction, Nov. '94, #89)

Tu Ch'iung (1396-1474), The Yu-sung (Friend of Pines) Garden. Handscroll, Palace Mus., Beijing. (Done for relative.)

- Ten Views of the Nan-ts'un (Southern Village), villa of T'ao Ts'ung-i. Album, dtd. 1437. Shanghai Museum.

Shen Chou (1427-1509), attrib. to. Tung-chuang t'u: The Eastern Villa. Garden of Wu K'uan. Album of 21 leaves (orig. 24). Copy? Not by Shen? Some compositions in common with album attrib. to Wen Cheng-ming (reproduction book).

- handscroll attrib. to Shen Chou, Sotheby's auction cat. (June '88, #7? can't locate.)

Wen Cheng-ming (1470-1559). "Verdant Pines and Clear Springs," 1552; "Living Aloft," 1543. (Parting pl. 114 & colorplt. 13.)

- Various handscrolls depicting people's villas & retreats. "The Chen-shang Studio," Shanghai Mus. Another, same title. "The East Garden," handscroll, 1530. Palace Mus., Beijing. (Quanji 7, 53.) "Thatched House at Hsü-ch'i," Liaoning Mus. (Australia Exhib. #15).

Wen Po-jen (1502-1575). "The White Deer Spring Retreat at She-shan." Handscroll. Palace Mus., Taipei. Photos.

-- "Thatched Houses at Nan-ch'i," long handscroll,1569. Palace Mus., Beijing. (Wu-men #140.)

Ch'ien Ku (1508-1572, follower of Wen Cheng-ming), "The Ch'iu-chih Garden," handscroll, 1564. (Wu-men #61.)

Ch'iu Ying (d. ca. 1552). "The Golden Valley Garden," "The Garden of Peach and Pear Trees." Large hanging scrolls, Chionin, Kyoto. Parting pl. 101, 102.

-- "Master Tung-lin's Villa." Parting pl. 95.

-- "Drunkards in the Garden." Handscroll. (Where?) After old comp.?

-- "The Garden of Solitary Pleasure" (Tu-lo Yüan). Handscroll. Accompanied by calligraphy by Wen Cheng-ming (Ssu-ma Kuang's essay, see Hardie trans. of Ji Cheng, pp. 123-24.) Cleveland Museum (Eight Dynasties #166). Article by Ellen Laing; also Harrist, "Site-names" article.

- Attrib. to Ch'iu Ying (but by follower). Panoramic View of a Garden. Handscroll. Nanking Museum.

V. The Late Ming

- Sun K'o-hung (1533-1611), "The Stone Table Garden," 1572. Distant Mts. pl. 25 and colorplt. 7, cf. p. 67; photos.

- Shen Shih-ch'ung (active ca. 1607-after 1640). Views of the Chiao (Suburban) Garden (of Wang Shih-min?), 1625. Distant Mts. pl. 32 and p. 83, Compelling Image 3.8, photos.

- Mi Wan-chung (chin-shih 1595, d. after 1628). The Shao Garden. Detail from a handscroll, 1617, Peking U. Library. Distant Mts. pl. 83 and p. 167. Study by Wm. Hung.

- Wu Pin (fl. ca. 1580-1625). "Spring Party in the Shao Garden. Handscroll, 1615. Wango Weng, Gardens in Chinese Art, no. 9, fig. 13.

Diversion: slides of the Fen-yang Pieh-shu or Fen-yang Villa, also called Kuo Chuang or Kuo Estate, on the west shore of the West Lake at Hangchou, facing the Su Dike (or Causeway). Built in Hsien-feng era (1851-61), restored and opened to public in 1991.

(Wu Pin, handscroll, 1610, portraying rock owned by Mi Wan-chung from 10 different angles! Systematic, quasi-empirical visual investigation of three-dimensional object. Cf.:)

- Chang Hung (1577-after 1652.) The Chih Garden, 1627. Album of 20 leaves (now divided among four collections!) Restless LS #16, p. 70; Distant Mts. pl. 12-13 and colorplt. 4; Compelling Image I.20 (cf. I.21 and I.22), I.23-24. Photos.

Hist. of Art 192A, Undergrad. Seminar, Spring 1995: Slide Show p.6

VI. Some Ch'ing Dynasty Garden Paintings

- Hung-jen. Washing the Inkstone in the Shu Spring, 1663. Shanghai Museum. I-yüan to-ying 36/47.

- Wang Yün, The Hsiu Yüan (Garden for Resting). 1667. Dalian Mus.(?) Quanji 10/103.

- Lü Huan-ch'eng. The Hsi-ch'i (Western Stream) Garden, 1689. Shanghai Museum. Quanji 10/80.

-Wang Hui. Garden/Estate pictures. 1693: Suchou Museum. 1717: Guy Weill, New York.

- The Ts'ang-lang T'ing, 1700, Nanjing Museum. (Slide, detail.)

- Transporting Bamboo (Tai-chu t'u), handscroll, 1698. Former Wang Nan-p'ing collection. Jade Studio #51; essay on it by Marshall Wu, pp. 41-50.

- Yang Chin, The Ch'ing-ch'i T'ing (Pure Stream Pavilion) Garden, 1712. Handscroll. Tientsin Mus. (Tumu 10/0945.)

Yüan Chiang (fl. ca. 1690-1743.) Handscroll, Shanghai Museum: The Tung Yüan (East Garden). (Article on it in Chinese)

- Another, private col., New York: The Chih Garden? (so ident. in Keswick). See also Murck & Fong. Photos.

- Leng Mei, ca. 1720: The Pi-chu Shan-chuang (Mt. Villa for Escaping the Heat.) Quanji 10/116.

- T'ang Tai and Shen Yüan. The Yüan Ming Yüan. 1744. Keswick 26-7.

- Lo P'ing, "Elegant Winter Gathering," 1790. Sotheby's auction, Nov.'91, #77.

- T'ang I-fen. The Ai-yüan or Garden of Love (?!) 1848. British Museum. Unpublished?

- Jen Hsiung. Thatched Cottages at Lake Fan, handscroll,1855, Shanghai Museum. Transcending Turmoil 61; article by Britta Erickson (where?)

- Hsü-ku, The Mei-hua Shu-wu (Study Among Blossoming Plum), 1894. Handscroll. Christie's auction, Dec. 87

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