A Scholar Gazing at the Moon is reminiscent of Li Bai李白’s (701–762) poem entitled Raising a Cup to Invite the Glowing Moon (jubei yao mingyue舉杯邀明月). While this painting has a two-character signature in the lower right with the name “Ma Yuan馬遠,” the signature is different from that on the painting in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, attributed to the Southern Song painter Ma Yuan (fl. 1190–1224) entitled Travelling the Mountain Paths in Spring (Shan jing chun xing 山徑春行) (fig. 1). Among the stylistic qualities which are present in the Seattle painting, that are associated with Ma Yuan and Southern Song, are those found in the so-called “one-corner composition” in the style of Southern Song (1127-1279). If we examine the seal with the inscribed characters Yufu tushu 御府圖書 in the upper left corner, and compare it to a seal with the same characters found on the calligraphy Chu Suiliang’s Copy of the Lanting Pavilion from the Second of Eight Lanting Pillars (Lanting bazhu di er ben zhumo lanting tie蘭亭八柱第二本褚摹蘭亭帖) (fig. 2) from the Southern Song imperial collection of Emperor Lizong 理宗 (r. 1224-64), the seal on the Seattle work is clearly a forgery and the painting never was in the Southern Song imperial collection as the forged seal suggests.

Fig. 1: Ma Yuan, Travelling the Mountain Paths in Spring (detail), Southern Song (1127-1279).Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Fig. 2: Chu Suiliang, Chu Suiliang’s Copy of the Lanting Pavilion from the Second of Eight Lanting Pillars (detail), Tang Dynasty (618-907). Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

Fig. 3: Ma Yuan, Singing and Dancing, Southern Song (1127-1279). Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

Whoever painted A Scholar Gazing at the Moon must have been intimately familiar with the styles of Ma Yuan and his son Ma Lin 馬麟 (fl. ca. 13th c.), and admired their work. In the Seattle scroll at the very top, the shape of the mountain peak in the distance was likely to have been developed from Ma Yuan’s Singing and Dancing (Tage tu 踏歌圖) (fig. 3). Clear similarities in overall appearance exist between these two works. The use of blunt tipped, “axe-cut” brushstrokes to describe the structure of the mountain peak and the way the pine trees grow on the mountain peaks all follow the same tradition. As for the jutting rocks at the bottom of the composition, they are painted using strong contrast between the dark ink and clear spaces of plain silk, which is a classical method known as the “large axe-cut” technique, also seen in Ma Yuan's Tage tu.

The architectural elements featured in the Seattle hanging scroll are noteworthy: in the immediate foreground is a large formation of jutting rocks with angular pine trees; behind the pines and rocks, a pavilion with open sides and topped with a hip-and-gable roof is situated on a high foundation. A ridge-end ornament in the shape of a horned dragon head is painted with great clarity, accenting the highest point of the main ridgeline of the roof; below, an inverted triangle of cusped flanges, an architectural component—known as “hanging fish” (chuiyu 垂魚)—appears. The end of the lower ridge is capped with similar animal masks and four elements depicting crouching beasts on the gable boards.

The open pavilion is furnished with a Ming-style lacquered table—a drinking table—with bridle joints. On it sits a fruit bowl, a basin, a square pitcher containing a crimson lingzhi 靈芝mushroom, athree-legged censer in the Xuande-style, and a teapot sitting in a warming bowl. The table is situated comfortably within the architectural space of the pavilion, which is defined by a wraparound banister of a type that incorporates a built-in bench.

The recluse's right arm leans on the railing, while his left hand lifts his drinking cup.As for Xuande era drinking cups that have been transmitted see Liao Baoxiu廖寶秀 ed., Mingdai Xuande guan yao jinghua tezhan tulu 明代宣德官窯菁華特展圖錄 (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1998) 198-239. Unfortunately, the silk is damaged precisely at the place where his hand grasps the cup. The bearded recluse's focus is to the right as he gazes up at the sky and the pale glow of the moon, shining above the pine tree. The image appears to be a poetic representation of raising one’s cup and admiring the moon. The recluse and his servant both wear white linen summer garments. The ink lines defining the clothing are similar to so-called dingtou shuwei釘頭鼠尾(“nail-head and rat tail”) strokes, with white highlights emphasizing the ink lines. Once again, this use of emphatic white lines recalls the famous Ma Lin painting Quietly Listening to Soughing Pines (Jing ting song feng 靜聽松風) (fig. 4) which features Song Lizong (1205–1264), who, like our recluse, is depicted with a bare chest . The pine trees in the Seattle Art Museum’s work are angular, seeming to move with the wind—the tree trunks twist and turn, the branches follow the direction of the wind. This creates the same impression of wind entering the pines as in Ma Lin’s Listening to Pines. The pine needles in the Seattle work extend in all directions, in a manner which is different from those in Listening to Pines but very similar to those in Ma Yuan’s Two Magpies amidst Pine and Stream (Song quan shuang que 松泉雙鵲) (fig. 5).

Fig. 4: Ma Lin, Quietly Listening to Soughing Pines, Southern Song (1127-1279). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Fig. 5: Ma Yuan, Two Magpies amidst Pine and Stream, Southern Song (1127-1279). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The Seattle work displays the essential qualities of Southern Song painting, and yet it is not a Song painting for reasons to be described below, that explain its Ming date coming out of the tradition of the Yuan dynasty. Someone might ask what exactly is it that distinguishes Song and Yuan painting of trees? And a reply might be: “As for [painting] tree branches there are four types: dingxiang丁香 (clove) of Fan Kuan范寬 (active late 10th to early 11th c.), xiezhua蟹爪 (crab claw) of Guo Xi 郭熙 (1023–ca. 1085), huoyan火燄 (fire ball) of Li Zundao李遵道 (1282–1328), and the tuozhi 拖枝 (hanging branches) of Ma Yuan.”Wang Luoyu汪砢玉, Shanhu wang珊瑚網, SKQS, 48.80. These examples clearly manifest the notion of idealized forms. Since a pine tree is recognizable by the average viewer as having certain characteristics, then how can we associate trees in nature with the artistic style of Ma Yuan? Indeed, we cannot help asking: in the real world where do such “pine trees” exist?

Actually, trees with dramatic hanging branches do exist, and when that rare form was copiously represented by an artist, then it became associated with him. According to a Ming author, “When Ma Yuan paints trees, the branches are angled lines and spread apart, which to this day is still seen in the gardeners' method of pruning, and is still referred to as ‘Ma Yuan’ 馬遠畫，多斜科偃蹇。至今園丁結法，猶稱馬遠云.”Tian Rucheng, 田汝成, Xi hu you lan zhi yu西湖遊覽志餘, in SKQS , 17.8. Trans. note: this text is also available in an edited punctuated edition which varies slightly from the one cited here: Tian Rucheng, Xi u you lan zhi yu (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban she, 1958), 17.321. For a long time now some people had already observed the combination of human agency and the natural world—in other words, the picturesque is beyond the representation of nature. All of the pine trees seen in both Ma Yuan’s Attending an Imperial Banquet (Huadeng shi yan 華燈侍宴) (fig. 6), and Xia Gui’s 夏珪 (act. ca. 1180–1230) Observing the Waterfall (Guan pu tu 觀瀑圖), may be viewed as examples of “gardeners’ method of pruning”—pine trees that have been modified by the human hand.

Fig. 6: Ma Yuan, Attending an Imperial Banquet (detail), Southern Song (1127-1279). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

As for works by the successors of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, there is a pair of scrolls titled Landscape with Pavilion (Louge shanshui tu 樓閣山水圖) by the Yuan painter Sun Junze孫君澤 (fl. 14th c.) in the Seikado Bunko Art Museum collection. In this work the composition emphasizes the slim yet towering forms of the pine trees, in association with the pavilion, rocky cliffs and mountain peak.

The pioneer of the Zhe school Dai Jin 戴進 (1388–1462) continued this compositional concept in his works, for example, in Returning Late from a Spring Outing (Chun you wangui 春遊晚歸) (fig. 7), which is in the collection of the National Palace Museum. After Dai Jin, foregrounding a large tree that occupies two-thirds of the painting’s surface, amidst images of pavilions and gardens, was common for Ming dynasty court painters as well as Zhe school painters. The Seattle painting is a work which originates in this tradition.

Fig. 7: Dai Jin, Returning Late from a Spring Outing (detail), Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Fig. 8: Li Tang, Windy Pines Among a Myriad Valleys (detail), Northern Song (960-1127). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

Fig. 9: Attributed to Yan Wengui, Ten Thousand Trees Among Fantastic Peak (detail). Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The distant mountain peaks in Scholar Gazing at the Moon are similar to those seen in the background of Singing and Dancing (Tage tu). This type of sky-piercing mountain peak within landscape painting can be seen in Windy Pines Among a Myriad Valleys (Wan he song feng 萬壑松風) by Li Tang 李唐 (ca. 1050–1130) (fig. 8). Another work attributed to Yan Wengui燕文貴 (fl. late 10th and early 11th c.) but similar to Li Tang’s style, Ten Thousand Trees Among Fantastic Peak (Qi feng wan mu 奇峰萬木) (fig. 9), also contains a significant number of distant peaks which are arranged so as to create a sense of space receding into the distance. Another example is Observing the Pavilion from the Mountain (Shan yao lou guan 山腰樓觀) by Xiao Zhao蕭照 (fl. 12th c.). All of these—now in the collection of the National Palace Museum—are forerunners of Singing and Dancing.

In comparison to Zhe school garden and pavilion landscape paintings, Scholar Gazing at the Moon indeed has a certain elegance and refinement, which is particularly evident in the mood of the painting—the temperament of the scholar, the pine trees like wandering dragons dancing alone, even the way in which the mountain rocks are painted using the “axe-cut” technique, applying brush and ink without a trace of roughness.

The style of this court painting has some similarity to the work of Zhou Chen周臣 (ca. 1450–1535). The Zhou Chen work titled Pleasant Bamboo (Yi zhu tu 怡竹圖) in the Shanghai Museum (fig. 10) is a composition in the style of Ma Yuan. In the painting, the entwined meandering pine tree trunk and branches, the radial shape of the clumps of pine needles, “axe-cut” method of the mountain rocks, all are very similar to the manner in which Ma Yuan utilized these various techniques. Tang Yin’s 唐寅 (1470–1523) untitled landscape is similar to that of his teacher Zhou Chen. Of course, this is not compelling evidence to say Scholar Gazing at the Moon was produced by Zhou Chen. Yet the scholar in this painting is not something that Zhou Chen or even Tang Yin could achieve. Even Qiu Ying仇英 (ca. 1494–1552) would not have painted a figure with such grace.

Fig. 10: Zhou Chen, Pleasant Bamboo, Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). © Shanghai Museum.

Regarding the dating of this work, the drinking table depicted is Ming-style furniture, on which a Xuande-style censer with loop-handles and a Xuande-style stem cup are placed. Hence, the painting cannot be earlier than the Xuande period (1426-35). In addition, a square pitcher and a teapot sit on the heating stand. As for how late the date of the painting can be, based on the quality of the painting techniques, it is no later than Zhou Chen, and considering application of brush and ink in the pine trees and the “axe-cut” style of rock formations, it is likely to have been composed before Wang E王諤 (fl. 1488–1505). In conclusion, Scholar Gazing at the Moon was most likely painted in the second half of the 15th or early 16th century.

© 2013 by the Seattle Art Museum