CAEA - Center for the Art of East Asia

Reinventing the Past: Antiquarianism in East Asian Art and Visual Culture—Part 1

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Another Romantic View of Chinese Antiquity: Prince Anp’yŏng’s Collection of Song and Yuan Paintings
Burglind Jungmann

Investigations into the history of art and visual culture, even if they are carried out comprehensively and carefully and take into account all known aspects of contemporaneous politics, society, and culture, are still constructions limited by the availability of information, of visual material, and literary sources. Moreover, authors, consciously or unconsciously, tend to use such constructed histories as support for their perspectives on historical matters, perspectives that are quite naturally tainted by their personal talents, goals, and preferences and by contemporary circumstances of what we have come to call “Zeitgeist.” Antiquarianism may be regarded as one kind of such constructed (art) history founded on the concept that certain periods of the past were more ideal than the present in various aspects, aesthetically, socially, politically.

In their book Streams and Mountains without End: A Northern Sung Handscroll and Its Significance in the History of Early Chinese Painting, published in 1967, Wen Fong and Sherman Lee commented on the famous scroll Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land, done in 1447 by the Chosŏn court painter An Kyŏn, as follows “Such a retardataire art, whether Korean or Chinese, is difficult to place in time and were it not for the incontestable fifteenth century date, one might argue for a Northern Sung attribution.” There is thus no doubt that we are here confronted with a case of antiquarianism. A comparison between An Kyŏn’s Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land and Guo Xi’s Early Spring of 1072 eloquently illustrates Wen Fong’s and Sherman Lee’s point. Moreover, the iconography of Dream Journey obviously attests to antiquarianism, as it is based on the well-known prose poem by Tao Qian (Yuanming, 365-427) which itself conveys the idea of a paradise-like physical and social space situated in the past. The iconography, stylistic similarities between An Kyŏn’s and Guo Xi’s paintings and the question of how the Korean painter might have studied the Song master’s landscape painting mode have been carefully examined by Ahn Hwi-joon and others. However, we may also see An Kyŏn’s painting as an example – or visualization – of a contemporaneous cultural trend. If so, we should be able to find similar or related trends of antiquarianism in other 15th century cultural and political contexts. Besides, other important questions emerge: How does the view of the Chinese past of the mid-15th century Chosŏn cultural elite affect our present-day perspective on Song and Yuan dynasty painting – or, in other words – on the antiquarianism we cherish today? And, does it support or collide with other cases of antiquarianism in Chinese and Korean painting history?

An Kyŏn’s Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land is closely linked to an important 15th century Korean text, Hwagi or Commentaries on Painting. The painting was commissioned by Prince Anp’yŏng (1418-1453), son of the so-called culture King Sejong (r. 1419-1450). Prince Anp’yŏng also owned a collection of Chinese and Korean painting and calligraphy and asked a friend, the powerful politician and scholar Sin Sukchu (1417-1475), to write a fairly detailed description of his collection, Hwagi, completed in 1445. The connection between the painting and the text is supported in multiple ways. Sin Sukchu states in Hwagi that An Kyŏn had been a close companion of the prince for a long time and that he saw a great number of ancient paintings and grasped their essential qualities. Moreover, the intimate relationship between the prince and the painter is proven by the fact that An Kyŏn was the only Korean painter represented in Prince Anp’yŏng’s collection, although a number of other famous mid-15th century Chosŏn painters are well-known from other sources.

About eighty per cent of Prince Anp’yŏng’s collection was of Chinese origin. Of the two hundred and twenty-two items Sin Sukchu described a hundred and seventy-four paintings and pieces of calligraphy were done by Chinese artists, one by a Japanese priest, and thirty-six paintings by An Kyŏn. Hwagi altogether lists thirty-three Chinese masters starting with Gu Kaishi (346-407) who is followed by painters and calligraphers of the Tang, Song, Yuan and early Ming periods. The latest known painter is Wang Mian (1335-1405) who died forty years before Hwagi was written. Besides, eleven ancient anonymous works are mentioned. The emphasis of the collection lies on the Yuan period (with 129 works by 21 painters, or 74 % of the Chinese collection), followed by the Song (30 works by 6 painters, or 14%). Prince Anp’yŏng owned seventeen works by Guo Xi and twenty-six pieces of calligraphy and two bamboo paintings by Zhao Mengfu. However, two nowadays unknown Yuan painters, Wang Gongyan who excelled in flower-and-bird painting and the landscape painter Li Bi, are represented just as well as the two well-known masters with twenty-four paintings each.

Prince Anp’yŏng’s Chinese painting collection gives evidence of three groups of Chinese artists, those well-known to us, others that were forgotten in China but whose works and names can be traced in Japanese and Western collections and written sources, and finally those of whom we have no other information than that conveyed by Sin Sukchu. Even more interestingly, Sin Sukchu does not mention some Chinese painters which we nowadays consider as dominant or most important. The painters listed under early periods up to the Song cause little problems since they are all very familiar to us. Hwagi starts to divert from our present-day knowledge when it comes to the Yuan dynasty. Two Southern Song painters, Ma Yuan and Xie Yuan, are listed under the Yuan dynasty, an indication that Sin Sukchu was not too familiar with the art of Southern Song. Of the other nineteen painters, seven are known and nine unknown. Two painters, Liu Daoquan and Lo Zhichuan, are only known through their paintings in Japanese collections or through other Korean or Japanese sources, and one is a Japanese monk who is otherwise unknown. Certain questions thus come to mind: When it comes to the Yuan dynasty, why is the knowledge of Sin Sukchu, Prince Anp’yŏng and their circle so different from ours? They knew Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) whom we know well, Yen Hui (1st half 14th c.) whom we know less, and Wang Gongyan whom we do not know at all. Why is none of the so-called “Great Masters of the Yuan,” whom we consider most important today, represented at all?

The common explanation for the difference between the 15th century Korean knowledge of the Chinese past and our present-day knowledge is that Prince Anp’yŏng’s selection was determined by certain political, social and geographical circumstances. One important way to answer those questions thus is to reconstruct the possible routes of how the Chinese paintings in Prince Anp’yŏng’s collection reached Korea, the ways China and Korea interacted diplomatically in the late Koryŏ and early Chosŏn, to look into the geographical and political components that influenced the transfer and preservation of art at the courts in China and Korea. Again these circumstances have been investigated quite well. However, if we regard the 15th century Korean perspective as a construction of the Chinese past – that is as antiquarianism – the contemporaneous element that determined the selection becomes important, the personal taste of the collector and his circle, their political and cultural environment, the so-called “Zeitgeist.” My paper will deal with the record of Prince An’pyŏng’s collection in three steps.

Step one will investigate the credibility of Hwagi. By citing some of Sin Sukchu’s commentaries on works by familiar Chinese painters and comparing them to extant visual material I will try to prove that the paintings the prince owned were indeed ancient Chinese originals. In step two I will introduce some painters who are less familiar from Chinese sources, but whose works are extant in Japanese and Western collections. In these cases, the Korean perspective not only adds to our present-day knowledge but the difference between the 15th century Korean view of Chinese painting history and our present-day view also illuminates the circumstances of early Chosŏn antiquarianism. Step three will deal with the collision of early Chosŏn antiquarianism and Chinese antiquarianism. The question of why certain painters of the Yuan period, such as the famous “Four Great Masters,” Huang Gongwang (1269-1354), Wu Zhen (1280-1354), Ni Can (1301-1374), Wang Meng (ca. 1308-1385) are not mentioned in Hwagi, even though the Yuan period is represented most comprehensively in the collection, leads to the most influential antiquarianism in Chinese painting history, that of Dong Qichang’s (1555-1636) theory of the Southern and Northern schools. Not only has it influenced later Chinese painters by telling them what orthodox styles to follow, in Korea and Japan it has – together with painting manuals – given rise to the idea that there was a more or less coherent literati painting style in China from the Tang period onward. It inspired generations of Korean and Japanese followers to create their own literati style (Namjonghwa, Nanga), and it has certainly conditioned the view on Chinese painting history from Dong Qichang’s own times onward well into the 20th century. Deconstruction of the edifice of the “Southern school” tradition has been undertaken from two sides, from the perspective of Japanese collections that have preserved paintings which would otherwise not have survived the catharsis of the Chinese literati movement, and by modern art historians who reclaim forgotten painting styles from obscurity.

The record of the collection of Chinese paintings and calligraphy owned by Prince Anp’yŏng offers various intertwined views on art historical constructions. The aim of this paper is thus to add another perspective to the process of constructing and deconstructing Chinese painting history.