The Development of Changzhou School and Yun Shouping’s (1633-1690) Flower Paintings

Abstract

Yun Shouping 惲壽平 (1633-1690) was one of the Early Qing orthodox masters. He embarked on his artistic career by painting landscapes in the Southern School style, but later gained his reputation for flower paintings in the “boneless” (mogu 沒骨) coloring method, a technique that does not leave traces of outlines on the pictorial surface. Living in the late Ming and early Qing period, Yun trod on an eventful trajectory of life. He was born to a family of literati and exhibited an aptitude for scholarly exercises during his childhood. As a Ming royalist, he was arrested for his activities against the Manchu rule. During his engagement in the resistance, he was accidentally reunited with his father, Yun Richu 惲日初, with whom he returned home together. Changzhou, Yun’s hometown, was a region that was particularly known for paintings of flowers and insects. Active since the Song period (960-1279), the Changzhou school developed a style of painting that achieved a lifelike verisimilitude of ordinary flowers and insects. Against this regional backdrop of the vivid and lifelike painting tradition, Yun applied the boneless coloring method to the genre of flower painting. This boneless coloring method allowed Yun’s flower painting to depart significantly from prior generations of Changzhou flower painters whose work relied on meticulous fine brushwork (gongbi 工筆). Yun began his study of flower painting from 1670s, acquired various techniques and styles of painters active from the Song through the Ming periods, and took the genre of flower painting to a level of literati painting. Prior to Yun, flowers were regarded as a pictorial subject reserved exclusively for academy painters. Yun overturned that perception, charting a new territory of artistic exploration for scholar-painters. His style exerted a far-reaching influence over diverse hosts of painters encompassing not only the Yun clan painters, but also court painters, the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, and even modernists. He also left indelible impacts on the history of Korean flower painting since his work came to be circulated in Chosŏn.