In this dramatic composition, Huang Shen illustrates an event in the life of a fabled ancient cultural hero, Wang Xiang王祥 (185–269), one of the twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety. For thirty years Wang Faithfully served his stepmother after his father’s death, steadfastly refusing all efforts to summon him to government service. After his sixtieth year, the governor of Xu in Anhui, Lü Qian 呂虔(active late 2nd century to early 3rd century), sent him a fine sword and asked him to accept an appointment as his successor. That is the scene depicted by Huang Shen, as the sword arrives by messenger and is carried to Wang by a female servant to the left of the other two women, who are presumably his wife and concubine. Wang sits sunk in meditation; eventually, as all viewers of the painting would know, he decided to accept the commission and subsequently rose to a very high and distinguished position.

Wang Xiang lived with his stepmother in Anhui, the mountainous landscape of which is evoked by the dramatic bare rock spires rising behind him. The rocks also allude to the rock gardens of Suzhou and Yangzhou, like the Lion Grove Garden, making an interesting conjunction of associations. Huang Shen accompanied his own mother to a new residence in Yangzhou in 1724 and escorted her back to Huaiyin in northern Jiangsu in 1735, when life became too difficult for her in Yangzhou and, like Lü, was noted for his devoted service to his mother. We are led to think, therefore, that Huang deliberately chose an old tale known to all as a way of conveying some aspects of his own life. It was about the time when he painted the present picture—of a man with a wife and concubine seated in his private garden—that his great commercial success as a painter in Yangzhou allowed him to “buy a house and take in a wife and concubine” himself. Chou and Brown, Elegant Brush, 212, quoting from Xie Kun’s Shuhua suojianlu. On Wang Xiang and Lü Qian, see Herbert A. Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary: 822.

The painting is done with masterly technique, almost as if Huang Shen were a successor of the great Fujian court painter of the preceding dynasty, men like Bian Wenjin邊文進 (active ca. 1426–35), Zhou Wenjing 周文靖 (?-after 1463), Zheng Wenying鄭文英, Li Zai 李在 (?-1431), and many others who perpetuated the Fujian tradition in the capital at Beijing and served there as academicians. In the eighteenth century most such painters served at the Manchu court, but Huang Shen’s associations were mainly in Yangzhou and his native region, Fujian. Like his predecessors, he was a versatile painter, skilled in all subjects and notable for his large-scale landscape and narrative compositions, like the present picture. The Zhe School had largely fallen into critical disrepute by this time, but Huang Shen carried on many of its ideals.

Huang is termed a “sanjue" because he was equally skilled in poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Oddly in comparison to other such men, he maintained high professional standards as a painter, emulated the mad monk calligrapher Huaisu’s懷素 (725–785) most cursive style, and wrote poetry that is barely legible to the casual reader. He is always numbered among the “eccentric” masters of Yangzhou and, with Hua Yan華嵒 (1682–1756) and Luo Ping 羅聘 (1733–1799), was the most versatile and accomplished of them all as the level of his professional craft.

© 1994 by the Yale University Art Gallery