Shen Chou - Chinese Landscape Artist

Mountains and Springs

Shen Chou, Chinese Landscape Painter

by Thea Tweet

In 1508 Shen Chou was 81 years old and considered the greatest landscape painter of the Ming Dynasty. Using his favorite format of the horizontal scroll, he employed brush and ink on paper to create  Mountains and Springs, which gives every evidence of being a valedictory piece.  From the solitary lily in the vase to the bent figure using a staff, all the elements of the painting--perhaps his last--suggest solitude and contentment.
The greater part of the long scroll is taken up with colophons of praise for the painter. These colophons attached to the painting are widely admired for the beauty of their calligraphy.  They call attention to the representation of “The Way” (a Taoist concept) and to the moral codes of Confucius. Both are native Chinese philosophies.
The seals attached to the paintings were usually those of subsequent owners of the scrolls. Today they might appear to be something of a distraction, but they serve the useful purpose of establishing the authenticity of the painting.
For a description of the painting itself, Shen Chou’s own words seem quite enough:
               White clouds like a belt            
            Encircle the mountain’s waist
            A stone ledge flying in space
            And the far thin road                                                      
Any brief overview of the life of Shen Chou must begin by noting that he was the spiritual child of the Yuan dynasty.  Although he was born in 1427, a good fifty-nine years into the Ming Dynasty, his family had close ties to one of the great painters of the Yuan dynasty, Wang Meng. Like all Chinese, Shen Chou was keenly aware of his heritage.
Shen Chou (pronounced Shawn Jo) was born in Suchow to a family of third generation inherited wealth, and he was able to build his own house on the family estate.  He resisted all efforts to attract him into official service.  He probably never forgot that Wang Meng died in prison. Shen Chou offered the excuse that he must care for his aged mother, who, fortunately for him, lived to the ripe old age of 99. Respect and  care for the aged saved more then one intellectual from the hazards of a capricious emperor and the intrigues of the court.
Despite his penchant for solitude and meditation, Shen Chou kept a number of warm friendships and founded a very influential school of painting known as the Wu School.  He spent his early years becoming an accomplished calligrapher and producing small paintings usually known as album leaves.
Shen Chou took as his tsu,  or style name, “Shih T’ien” (Field of Stones), a name that means uselessness.  In the forty years of his mature painting career he became more and more selective so that Mountains and Springs appears modern in its abstract qualities.
In the long history of Chinese landscape painting it is important to observe some conventions as well as to develop distinctive differences.  Much as he admired Wang Meng, by the time he was 40, Shen Chou developed some characteristic differences. While Wang Meng covered every inch of the paper with what has been called lapidary richness, Shen Chou’s painting is less claustrophobic, leaving space for a figure to emerge.  His rocks are roughly natural, not just pleasing curvilinear shapes.  His use of “tien” or expressive dots is limited to accent pieces. Some of his contemporaries used the tien far more than suits modern taste.
He was 40 when he made his first painting of significance, Lofty Mount Lu.  It introduces a waterfall as an important element in the painting, which was to persevere virtually unchanged in Mountains and Springs.  His favorite format reading from right to left is as follows: billowing clouds on the right, a modest hut containing either a solitary vase or several figures, a solitary figure gazing at the tumbling waterfall that bisects the painting, and on the left a mountain range running along a stream or path representing the tao, or the way, as it is usually translated.
Preparing his own colors as he sat at his painting table was part of the or the way, as it is usually translated. painting experience for the Chinese painter.  The malachite green (copper carbonate) available to Shen Chou provides a more subdued effect than the later, more powerful, greens introduced in the 19^th century.
At first glance Chinese paintings seems profoundly different from contemporary Western painting, but on considering the work of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who was Shen Chou’s Western contemporary, it is easily seen that their objectives as painters were remarkably similar. Leonardo makes one statement that could have come from the pen of Shen Chou: “Above all he (the painter) must keep his mind as clear as the surface of a mirror…the painter must remain solitary.  While you are alone, you are entirely your own master.” It is possible to see that both painters shared a common obsession to convey the chi’yun, the breath of life.
Two profound differences exist between the two masters. Like his Italian contemporaries, Leonardo needed a patron.  Thanks to his independent wealth, Shen Chou had the privilege of selecting his own subject matter.  However, the most notable difference in the work is of the two artists is the inclusion of poetry on the surface of the painting. Leonardo made no secret of his preference for painting over poetry. Shen Chou made them coexist, for his love of poetry was as great as is love of painting,  In fact, Shen Chou’s poetry was so much admired that a volume of his collected poems was published in 1615, more that 100 years after his death.
Repeated examination of the painting is very rewarding. The longer you look, the more you see. An American painter expressed the very soul of Shen Chou: “First you make a bow to the landscape.  Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then and not until then can you paint the landscape.”  John Marin, 1928.