In eighteenth-century Yangzhou, the well-established genre of ink plum painting [momei 墨梅] underwent a critical revision by a small coterie of creative and ambitious artists who found in its compositional constraints and layered literary associations an evocative medium for displaying their worldly refinement and imagination. Coming of age as that world began to wane, Luo Ping was first exposed to the art of flowering plum painting by his mentor Jin Nong金農, (1687–1763) a fervent admirer who had been inspired in his experimentalism by his contemporaries Wang Shishen汪士慎 (1686–1759) and Gao Xiang高翔 (1688–1753), who specialized in plum painting. At the Thatched Hut of Fragrant Leaves, Luo Ping’s residence and atelier, the artist and his wife, the poet Fang Wanyi方婉儀 (1732–1779), formulated a versatile pictorial idiom of intricate configurations in soft tones and sinuous lines which was eventually passed down to their sons and daughter, and came to be known as Luo Family Plum style. The multiple incarnations of the plum blossom modulated the tone of an artistic, intellectual, and personal conversation that cut across three generations of Yangzhou residents, their bonds and social aspirations, and alternating fortunes.

This particular archival inclination lies behind this small album that, albeit undated, should be ascribed to Luo Ping’s late practice (1780–90s), when the artist had secured himself as his generation’s foremost practitioner through a vast, specialized production, as well as teaching activities. The eight leaves unfold as a series of independent exercises on transmitted pictorial manners that range from the classicizing boneless ink wash technique (Leaf Six), the light-colored boneless wash, tinged with gendered allusions (Leaf Two), to the daring interplay of a pale ink wash ground against which white-reverse petals and light snow materialize (Leaf Eight). Stylistic and compositional references to some of the genre’s most accomplished models, past and present, are pervasive and foreshadow Luo Ping’s desire to be inscribed within that self-invoked lineage of pictorial brilliance. The artist adds no signature or inscription, but an impressive sequence of seals by famous carvers of the time complements each image, superimposing Luo Ping’s shifting artistic personae to the ephemeral permutations of the motif, and turning the album into a personal digression that lingers between an artist’s sourcebook and a pictorial journal.

Two inscriptions were added by admirers at a later date. The unidentified author by the name of Laozhao, who inscribed the album in the wuyin year, emphasizes Luo Ping’s encyclopedic presentation of the motif and its didactic potential. Along these lines, when in 1947 Ling Yanchi凌晏池 (1892–1965) dedicated the album to Chang Ch’ung-ho 張充和 (born 1913), herself sensitively conversant with the genre, anticipated that Chang, like many before her, would establish Luo Ping as a model and carry the album with her, “where the colorful clouds are to ask the master himself what is your method of painting blossoming plum."

© 2013 by the Seattle Art Museum