Zhe School (painting)

Although neither a school in the traditional sense of an academy sponsoring and training a select coterie of gifted artists or an actual confederation of artists publicly and formally committed to a similar vision of artistic representation, the Zhe School is a term used by art historians to refer to a loosely organized alliance among conservative, classically trained decorative painters that emerged in the mid-Ming Dynasty during the early decades of the fifteenth century. Compelled largely by the charisma of a single prolific landscape artist Dai Jin, these painters came to embody the inherited tradition of formally conservative art that had its roots in aesthetic protocols that were themselves nearly four centuries old, dating back to the imperial court style and tastes of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279). The school derives its name from the first character of Dai Jin’s native province of Zhejiang in East China.

Background

It is something of a handy rubric (if a bit of a simplification) to approach the golden era of decorative landscape art during the Ming Dynasty as a conflict between two Southern schools of landscape art: the Wu school and the Zhe school. The designation of Southern had less to do with geography than with style and approach to the purpose and the execution of landscape art. Within this dichotomy, the Zhe School represents the considerable body of work by artists aligned to the imperial court, actually financially supported by the elite power structure and committed to providing the art that satisfied that particular taste. These were not court appointed artisans as was the tradition in Renaissance Europe, but rather they were networked to the imperial court, and their work was marketed to and by their considerable resources.

Although dominated by subject matters drawn from nature—birds, flowers, mountains, trees—the work sought not to capture the expressive flow of the natural world but rather to maintain the careful, meticulous, vivid lines and soft, muted colors of the classical templates the artists had studied. These works sought to be admired not for their realism or for their expressive originality but rather as creations of trained artists using esteemed works as their models. The brush work was delicate. The works were large and grand in scale. But the subject matter did not disturb the viewer. The intention was for the art work to find favor in the imperial court and to be displayed for popular approval. The works generally lacked narrative, the kind of artistic and symbolic cohesion contemporary audiences expect from a painting. Zhe works are more like bits of carefully rendered, recognizable objects set against each other and within a kind of abstract backdrop for context: a fisherman and a tree; a flower and a bird; a tree and a hillside.

The Wu school, by contrast, sought to invest landscape work with the emotional edge of the painter and to create a narrative line among elements of a landscape. Wu painters were not academically trained in the discipline and formal expectations of traditional decorative art. The Wu school demands attention, liberating the treatment of virtually the same subject matter with harsher, expressive brush strokes and a far wider palette, seeking to capture not some inherited aesthetic model but rather the vivid animation and composition of nature itself. The Zhe school’s works are quieter by contrast, tempered, designed to be background and ornamentation.

Overview

Seldom does an entire school of painting center so completely on the influence of a single painter, but the reach and achievement of the Zhe school is very much about the artisan, Dai Jin (1388–1462) and, more specifically, the story of his frustrations with and his ultimate departure from the imperial court life of Beijing. Raised in rural poverty in the province of Zhejiang more than 800 miles from Beijing, Dai was trained to be a carpenter, but he exhibited a precocious ability to sculpt animals and birds to the delight of his family and neighbors. Restless to explore his creativity, Dai taught himself through dint of patient practice the basics of ink wash landscape art. Certain of his talent, he made the arduous journey to Beijing and quickly earned an appointment as court painter. His talent was singular—he brought to his landscapes a strikingly delicate brushstroke, and whatever his subject—flowers, historic characters, fruits, dragons and monsters, even the gods themselves—Dai executed the lines with a fine and elegant stroke. He quickly ran afoul of more established artists in the court. He faced trumped up charges of being antigovernment on the evidence of paintings in which, for example, he had robed a simple fisherman in the red coat emblematic of the court. The charges stuck and Dai was sentenced to be executed. With the help of others, however, he returned to his home province and there began what would become a most productive and influential career, far from the imperial courts.

Although never striking out into expressionist self-indulgence, Dai practiced—and schooled his disciples—in the subtle art of revisiting traditional templates and repurposing them for individual expression. His revolution was understated and more complex than was the Wu school’s celebration of the artist. Dai never abandoned the clear and firm line of the Southern school, and expanded only modestly its sense of color range. Rather he strove for an embracing, even soothing effect. He preferred large scale works designed to ornament homes and even businesses with a quiet grace and dignity. In Looking Three Times at the Thatched Hut, for instance, the ongoing animated discussion among four characters is all but lost in the sweeping vertical reach of a single grand tree and, beyond, the ascending lines of hills, all of it bathed in a muted gold wash. That subtle grandeur epitomizes the achievement of the Zhe school.

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