The Subject:     The true story of the romance of the emperor and his concubine, the facts of history, are not very edifying.  In A.D. 745, the emperor, then over sixty years, was attracted by the beauty of the wife of his son, Prince Shou.  He forced the Prince to divorce his wife, gave him another bride in compensation, and took the infamous Yang Gui-fei into his own harem.  Yang soon managed to acquire a complete domination over her aged consort.  It was through her influence that An Lu-Shan rose to the highest favor and obtained the power to organize his terrible revolt.  After fleeing the capital with the emperor, she was strangled on the insistence of his bodyguards.  The emperor never recovered, and after abdicating, wandered unhappily about the palace mourning his concubine.

The Artist:     Attributed to the Zhang Zeduan [Chang Tse-tuan], a member of the scholar-gentry, appointed to the Hanlin Academy between 1110 and 1117, and perhaps the greatest Song painter of realistic scenes.  Famous for his paintings of boats, wagons, markets, bridges, and architecture, his works are almost photographic in their range of detail depicted and Zhang's complete mastery of shadowing.  He did not consider it beneath him to concern himself with the mundane details of everyday life. 1

The Work:       Old Lai-tzu is an illustration of one of the Twenty-Four Stories of Filial Piety which would be memorized by generations of Chinese children.  The Daoist philosopher, in order to show his seventy-year old parents that seventy is not old, amuses them by dressing and playing with toys like a small child.  Just off the left front corner of the square mat on which the parents sit with their couch/platform are two containerized plantings.  A round light colored pot, resting in a shallow flaring bowl with at least three feet, holds a penjing which is equivalent to perhaps nine inches in height.  To the left of this is a larger round lipped pot, perhaps eight inches deep by eighteen or more inches across.  This is supported by a large dark X-shaped stand having four legs, each connected to its opposite by two horizontal bars.  The pot, which has some type of design on its sides, holds a wide V-shaped plant or possibly a penjing. 

The Artist:        Chao Meng-chien (1199-1295). 2

The Work:     The Reclining Pine depicts a flat rectangular tray, light colored with corner feet, holding a tree which curves away from and then back over a rockery to the immediate left of the pine.  What appears to be a thin wire is very loosely draped around the tree's trunk.  The wire so positioned serves no apparent purpose -- perhaps the artist depicted the tree or at least the wiring only from second-hand knowledge.  Was the wire perhaps left on the tree loosely after being unwound, waiting for the next tightening and shaping?  If so, this is probably the earliest evidence of a tree wired.  Or is the wire actually string, used in Buddhist temples as a symbol of a connection with the Buddha?

The Artist:     Li Shixing [Li Shih-hsing] (1280-1368). 3

The Work:     Gathering in the Apricot Garden (c.1437) is an ink and color on silk painting about a meeting by the celebrated civil servants, the three Yang brothers, with scholar officials at Yang Rong's garden on April 6, 1437.  Right of center and partially hidden behind a wall of sorts are two elaborate pots on a stone table.  To the left and slightly forward is a scalloped/fluted oval bowl containing companion grasses (?), and a little towards the back to the right is a larger rectangular pot containing a tree. 

The Subject:      The three Yangs were celebrated for their exemplary service as consultants to the empire.  Yang Shiqi, Rong and Pu [Shih-ch'i, Jung and P'u] entered the Hanlin Academy -- as did most other consultants who were then recruited through examinations -- at about the same time and served five emperors in their roles of increasing importance.  Their scholarship, brilliance, and justice contributed greatly to the stability and moderation of the Ming empire up to 1440, when old age and death began to eliminate them from the court.  All three were grand secretaries.

The Artist:     Xie Tingxun [Hsieh T'ing-hsun]. 4

The Work:     Facing forward, a woman of education is seated on a stool in front of a table which has legs in the form of rocks.  Behind her and to her right on the table are a book, a ch'in (zither), a scroll-painting, and an inkwell in the form of a mountain.  Left of the table on the ground/floor is a landscape in a dark rectangular container.  A tree, perhaps equivalent to 18 inches tall, is in the left half of the container.  It appears to be near leafless but has good rootage.  Perhaps a low horizontal rock or two are in the right half.  The soil surface is light colored on both sides.

The Artist:     Wang Wei (1495-1508). 5

The Work:     The Jin Gu (Golden Valley) Garden of Shi Chong  [Chin-ku, Shih Ch'ung] (first half 16th cent.).  Two large potted trees, in light colored low wide 4-lobed containers, are on the ground outside of a covered breezeway.  Two medium-sized potted trees are under the covering, their dark deep containers with flaring square edges rest on large light-colored carved three-legged tables.  The first two trees are the equivalent of at least four feet in height; the other pair at least three feet.

The Subject:     An imaginative portrayal of the A.D. third century garden as a sixteenth century-style elaborate estate.  Despite the protestations by Shi Chong (249-300) that his estate was only a simple country retreat, his garden has gone down in history as one of the most opulent estates of all time.  It was northeast of the capital city of Luoyang and lasted until Tang dynasty times (seventh century).  The legendary garden, with its "many thousands" of cypresses, numerous buildings and a private orchestra, was the site of many festivals and poetic compositions.  It became a classic symbol of luxurious living.

The Artist:     Qiu Ying [Ch'iu Ying, c. 1510-1551], born in Wuxian [Wu-hsien] of lowly origins, was neither a court painter nor scholar but a humble professional.  Idealizing in his pictures the leisurely life of the gentry whose equal he could never be, he was happiest if one of the great literati condescended to write a eulogy on one of his paintings.  Qiu is also famous for his long handscrolls on silk depicting exquisite detail and done in delicate color.  His delightful pictures are widely appreciated both in China and in the West, and next to Wang Hui [1632-1717, one of the so-called Six Great Masters of the early Qing Dynasty], Qiu is probably the most forged painter in the history of Chinese art! 6

The Work:     Early Spring in a Palace Garden during the Han period (Han Gong Qun Xiao Tu [Han Kung Ch'un Hsiao T'u]).  Two separate groups of pentsai are to be seen on this scroll.  The one about a quarter of the way from the right edge is made up of a medium grouping of three columns of rock in a large raised basin/stand, and flanked by two potted broad-leaf trees.  The right pentsai with at least four pom-pom layers of foliage is in a round pot; the left with at least six is in a rectangular container.  The group -- just above the horizontal centerline of the scroll -- is in the middle of the balustrade-enclosed open space.  The women viewing these do so from outside the space. 
     The second group of trees, less than a quarter of the way from the left edge of the scroll, is made up of five shallow containers on a low table.  The rightmost planting holds a vertical rock in an elliptical dish, and next to that is a companion plant in a deeper rectangular tray.  In the center is a taller flowering (?) tree in another but also deeper elliptical container.  Then comes a shallow round tray of grasses and, finally, at the left edge of the table and in a rectangular bowl, a thin-trunked pine with at least six pom-pom layers of foliage.  The three deepest pots each have a nailhead relief above the outside bottom.  The group is in the very foreground/bottom of the scroll, with a very tall [as depicted, perhaps 15 foot tall] rockery behind and to scroll left.  Two women chat just in front of the rockery, which has two trees growing close behind it.  (There could be three distinct pieces making up this group of rockery, the left and back section resembling a very perforated gargantuan sponge.)  A pavilion with five women on the scroll right of the pentsai is the visual balance to the rockery. 

The Subject:      This long scroll illustrates the occupations of a noble lady and her female friends in an exclusive private garden with pavilions, mirroring ponds, tunneled rocks, and flowering trees.  The sight as depicted is not meant to be a historical reconstruction, and it bares little connection with the actual styles of the Han Period.  Rather, it gracefully represents the elegant modes and the architectural decoration of the Ming Dynasty.  The scroll, of course, is meant to be viewed right to left, winding up in one's right hand what has been seen and unrolling with one's left hand new sections.  The entire scroll is not meant to be viewed at one time, as Western style museum displays seem to require. 

The Artist:     Attributed to Qiu Ying also. 7

The Work:     In an untitled painting, three women are examining a penjing in a low round light-colored container resting on a low table in a palace garden.  One of them invites a fourth to join them.  Just right of the fourth woman is a lotus-dotted bathing pool. 

The Author:     Also ascribed to Qiu, but executed later. 8

The Work:     An unattributed work (1637) depicts three gentlemen in long-eared officials' hats inspecting handsome pentsai in an outdoor courtyard.  Three servants left of center each hold a container for one of the officials in particular to examine.  The rearmost pentsai possibly is a maple with a rock in an outsweeping-lipped circular bowl; the front left one, a pine -- a symbol of incorruptibility -- in a tiled or lined circular pot; and the right front rectangular container has one or two rocks which are slightly taller than the narrow-leaved plants around them. 

The Subject:     A four line caption down the upper right edge of the painting translates approximately as: 

1.    Wu, Yee-Sun  Man Lung Artistic Pot Plants (Hong Kong: Wing-Lung Bank Ltd; 1974, Second edition), pg. 30, with b&w photo; Sullivan, Michael  The Arts of China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1984, Third Edition), pg. 159; Fitzgerald, C.P.  China, A Short Cultural History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1985), pg. 299.

2.      Fairbank, John K., Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig:  East Asia, Tradition & Transformation  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; 1989.  Revised Edition), pg. 45.  An 1873 Shanghai woodblock print is also shown on this page illustrating the same story.  In its lower right corner there are two tall containers, with triangular petals along the bottom and drum-nails along the top.  These pots hold flowering plants, somewhat stylized, with thin trunks/stems.  Compared to other portrayals of that era, there is no justification in terming the plants here as pentsai.

3.    Wu, pg. 32.  Pertaining to the early existence of wire in China, the twelfth-century writer Dong Yu [Tung Yu] said of the greatest Tang writer and possibly greatest master of painting in the history of the Far East: "Wu Daozi [Wu Tao-tzu, born c. A.D. 700]'s figures remind me of sculpture.  One can see them sideways and all around.  His linework consists of minute curves like rolled copper wire; however thickly his red or white paint is laid on, the structure of the forms and modelling of the flesh are never obscured." per Sullivan, pg. 125; Fitzgerald, pg. 447; the string theory, per conversation with Fred Carpenter at the Phoenix Bonsai Society, 12/15/92.

4.    Smith, Bradley and Wan-go Weng  China: A History in Art (A Gemini Smith Inc., Book published by Doubleday & Company; 1979), pg. 213, location given as Wan-go H.C. Weng, New York.

5.    Stein, Rolf A. The World in Miniature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1990), pg. 32.

6.    Keswick, Maggie Chinese Garden: History, Art & Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.; 1978), pg. 74, location given as Chion-in, Kyoto; Sullivan, pp. 209, 236-237; Sirén, Osvald Gardens of China (New York: The Ronald Press Company; 1949), Plate 82; Wu, pg. 33, who lists the artist as Chao Ying.

7.    Siren, pp. 80-81, Plates 92-95, with enlargement of center of Plate 94, Rockery and dwarf trees on low table, which is also in Thacker, Christopher The History of Gardens (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1979), pg. 54 as fig. 29.  Siren states that the painting belongs to C.T. Loo & Co., New York.  Photocopies of the Plates can be combined to form a mini-scroll 12 cm. tall by 156.3 cm long to give a better appreciation of the original scroll.

8.    Third section of three in Plate 90 of Siren, from a private collection in Stockholm.

9.   Wood, Frances A Companion to China (New York: St. Martin's Press; 1988), b&w line drawing, pg. 147; translation by Michelle Chang of Taipei while as a student at ASU, Tempe, AZ, c.1995.