Southern Song Dynasty

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Southern Song Dynasty (1127±1279)

In 1125, when the Jurchen, a seminomadic people from northeast Asia, invaded Song China and

captured the capital at Bianliang (modern Kaifeng), founding their own Jin dynasty in the north, the Songcourt reestablished itself in the south in Hangzhou, where it continued to rule for another 150 years as the

Southern Song dynasty.

Southern Song society was characterized by the pursuit of a highly aestheticized way of life, and

paintings of the period often focus on evanescent pleasures and the transience of beauty. Images evoke

poetic ideas that appeal to the senses or capture the fleeting qualities of a moment in time. One

particularly important source of inspiration for Southern Song artists was the natural beauty of Hangzhou

and its environs, especially West Lake, a famed scenic spot ringed with lush mountains and dotted with

palaces, private gardens, and Buddhist temples.

The Southern Song Imperial Painting Academy continued the stylistic direction and high technical

standards established by Emperor Huizong in the early twelfth century. Often executed in the intimateoval fan or album-leaf format, academic paintings²and the imperially inscribed poems that sometimes

accompany them²reveal an increasingly narrow, concentrated vision and a commitment to the exact

rendering of an object. The cultivation of a tranquil and detached mind free of material entanglements

was a common concern of Song Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130±1200): the "investigation of

things [leading to] the extension of knowledge."

The decorative arts also reached the height of elegance and technical perfection during the Southern

Song. Like painting, the plastic arts responded to two different aesthetics²that of the imperial court and

that of popular culture. Supreme among the decorative arts of the Song period are ceramics, which many

connoisseurs consider the highest artistic achievement of the Chinese potter.

Ca 150

The Song government prospers, advancing China's position as a major maritime power. Massive ships

travel as far as the Malabar Coast of India and the Red Sea, exporting silk, porcelain, dye, and other

luxuries.

Tea bowl, Song dynasty, 960±1279; Jian wareFujian Province, ChinaStoneware with hare's-fur glaze

The Jian ware temmoku tea bowls of Fujian Province havelong been appreciated in Japan; indeed, theterm temmoku itself is derived from the Japanesepronunciation of the Chinese Tianmu Shan, a mountainwhere, according to tradition, Japanese Buddhist priestsvisited a Buddhist temple and acquired some of these bowlsto take back to Japan. The Jian tea bowls are fairly uniformin potting, with dark, coarse-grained stoneware bodies andlustrous bluish black or brownish black glazes that generally

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-

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Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink on silk; 5 columnsin regular script

During the Southern Song, artists and connoisseurs who

wished to express their emotional responses to paintings

frequently added poems to them. Empress Yang's poemsappear on a number of paintings by court artists such as Ma

Yuan (active ca. 1190±1225) and Ma Lin (active ca. 1180±

after 1256). This quatrain must once have complemented a

fan painting of flowers, but it reveals more about the

empress' state of mind than about the lost painting it

accompanied:

My makeup worn and faded, only the scent lingers;Still I shall enjoy spring's beauty before my eyes.Once you said to me, "How a year blooms quicklyand as quickly dies!

May we now forsake worldly splendors for the land of wine?"

Mountain Market in Clearing Mist, Southern Songdynasty (1127±1279)Xia Gui (Chinese, active ca. 1195±1230)

Album leaf; ink on silk

This album leaf presents a poetic evocation of one of the Eight V i ews of t he X iao and X iang R iv ers. Xia's boldlyexecuted brushstrokes and ink dots create an abstractlanguage of visual signs rather than merely descriptiveforms: the kinaesthetic brushstrokes, which changeeffortlessly from outlines and foliage dots to wedge-shaped

modeling strokes and ink wash, at once simplify and unifythe landscape and human forms, breathing life into themoisture-drenched landscape. It was this brilliantlysimplified ink-wash and ax-cut brush idiom, infusing gesturewith meaning, that paved the way for the calligraphicrevolution of expressive brushwork in the ensuing Yuandynasty.


of-art/13.100.102

Orchids, Southern Song dynasty (1127±1279)Ma Lin (Chinese, active ca. 1180±after 1256)

Album leaf; ink and color on silk

This exquisite representation of an orchid, signed by MaLin, son of Ma Yuan (active ca. 1190±1225), exemplifies the

style of formal realism favored by the aristocratic SouthernSong court. The simple asymmetrical balance of flowersand leaves, meticulously rendered in subtle shades of lavender, white, and malachite green, bespeaks aconsciously aestheticizing sensibility. Such flower paintingsrecall late Southern Song lyric poems about flowers.


of-art/1973.120.10



Narcissus, Southern Song dynasty (1127±1279)Zhao Mengjian (Chinese, 1199±before 1267)Handscroll; ink on paper

Zhao Mengjian, a member of the Song imperial family and

an accomplished scholar and calligrapher, specialized inpainting narcissi and raised the flower to the level of the

orchid in the esteem of scholars.

Offering the promise of spring, the narcissus is known in

Chinese as the "water goddess" (shuixian) or "the goddess

who stands above the waves" (lingbo xianzi ). The fragrant

blossoms are associated with the two goddesses of the

Xiang River and, by extension, with Qu Yuan (ca. 343±277

B.C.), author of Li S ao (On Encountering Sorrow). Qu Yuan,

a loyal minister of the state of Chu, drowned himself in a

tributary of the Xiang River after failing to alert his prince of

the imminent danger threatening the state.

In a poem appended to the scroll after the Mongol

conquest, the Song loyalist Qiu Yuan (1247±after 1327)

describes Zhao's narcissi as the only vision of life in an

otherwise devastated land:

T he shiny bronz e di sh i s upset, and t he i mmort al s' d ew spill ed; T he br ight j ad e cup i s smashed , li ke broken cor al. I pi t y t he narc i ssus for not being t he orc hid. W hi c h at l east had k now n t he sober mini ster from C hu.


of-art/1973.120.4

Dish, Southern Song dynasty (1127±1279), 12th±13th

century; Guan wareFrom the Hangzhou kilns, Zhejiang Province, ChinaPorcelaneous stoneware with crackled blue glaze

The outstanding feature of a family of ceramics known asGuan ("official") ware is a deep, rich glaze that reflects theSong delight in the soft colors of nature. The remarkablequality of the Guan glaze was achieved by applying it inmany coats; this can be seen at the foot of this superb


of-art/24.172.1



Guan dish, where the effect of the layering has beencompared with the lines left on the shore by the recedingtide. This dish is the embodiment of the sense of serenitythat is the hallmark of Song pottery. Its glaze, whichresembles the pale grayish blue of polished marble, can befully appreciated only by running one's fingers over thesurface. Guan wares were produced for the court in at leasttwo groups of kilns in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, after the Southern Song capital was firmly established there.

Vase, Southern Song dynasty (1127±1279), 12th±13thcentury; Longquan wareChina, Possibly from the Dayao kilns, ZhejiangProvincePorcelaneous stoneware with relief decoration under celadon glaze

To connoisseurs of Chinese ceramics, theword celad on brings to mind first and foremost the lusciousglazes of the porcelaneous stonewares that were producedin the Longquan kilns of Zhejiang Province during theSouthern Song period. These wares are the triumphantconclusion of a tradition of high-fired green glazes thatbegan in the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600±1050 B.C.)²glazesthat were corrected and improved upon through thecenturies as though countless generations of potters wereall striving toward the common ultimate goal of a glaze suchas this. The form of this mallet-shaped vase has beensimplified in the interests of a jadelike glaze that almostbegs to be touched. Its streamlined shape is underscoredby the contrast of two crisply molded fish that serve as

handles.


of-art/50.145.301

Scholar by a Waterfall, Southern Song dynasty(1127±1279), late 12th±early 13th centuryMa Yuan (Chinese, active ca. 1190±1225)

Album leaf: ink and color on silk

Ma Yuan, a fourth-generation member of a family of painters, was a leading artist at the Southern Song paintingacademy in Hangzhou. A city of unsurpassed beauty,Hangzhou was graced with pavilions, gardens, and scenic

vistas. In this album leaf, which shows a gentleman in agardenlike setting, the jagged rhythms of the pine tree andgarden contrast with the quiet mood of the scholar, whogazes pensively into the bubbling rapids of the cascade.


of-art/1973.120.9

Viewing Plum Blossoms by Moonlight, SouthernSong dynasty (1271±1368)Ma Yuan (Chinese, active ca. 1190±1225)Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink and color on silk


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Crafted as carefully as the regulated verse of a Tang-dynasty quatrain, Ma Yuan'sV i ew ing P l um Bl ossoms by Moonlight is a visual poem evoking a complex sense of time, place, and mood. The browns and blacks in the treesand rocks contrast with the light grayish hues of the cliff andmountain to suggest the mist-filled, moonlit atmosphere of an early spring evening. The thatch roof of a pavilionidentifies the place as a garden setting. The white-robedgentleman, framed by the dark angular forms of thelandscape, perfectly counterbalances the moon in its settingof limitless space. Recalling a yin-yang cosmic diagram withits implication of positive within negative, light within dark,solid within void, the painting may be read as an emblem of man's dual nature: tied to the physical world, man's spirit isnot contained by it but, like the plum, reaches upward topartake of the infinite. Poet Strolling by a Marshy Bank, Southern Songdynasty (1127±1279)Liang Kai (Chinese, active first half of 13th century)

Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink on silk

Liang Kai served as a painter-in-attendance at the Songpainting academy in Hangzhou from about 1201 to 1204; helater relinquished that prestigious position to live and paintat a Chan (or Zen, in Japanese) Buddhist temple. Like hisbest known paintings, preserved mostly in Japanesecollections, this small landscape conveys a spiritual intensitytypical of Liang's works. Under the great cliff, in the stillnessof the landscape, a solitary figure meditates on the illusoryworld before him.


of-art/1989.363.14

Southern Song Dynasty

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