Wintry Trees

• Key facts


  Artist: Wen Zhengming

  Medium: Hanging scroll, ink on paper

  Size: 90.5cm high x 31cm width unmounted

  Location: made in Suzhou, S.E. China now in the British Museum
• Composition


  The composition is affected by the tall narrow format of scroll paintings, and the placement of the calligraphy and seals at the top also adds to the overall verticality
• Foreground


  division into three sections linking to the trees right foreground, the taller central clump and the balancing trees to the left. . The meandering path of the stream and placement of rocks takes one’s eyes back into the distance with the smallest and sparsest trees back left.
• The rather dry application of thin lines of ink leads to a sense of bareness and suggests winter as does the total lack of colour.
• Tonal modelling


  Tonal modelling of trunks and rocks effectively creates three-dimensional effects with a heaviness and weight to the rocks that counters the spindly branches.
• Light


  The lack of a single light source or cast shadows similarly suggests the low cool light of cloudy winter sky.
• Brushwork


  Wen Zhengming chose suitable brushwork by looking back to the work of a Yuan master five hundred years previously, that of the landscape artist Li Cheng (919-967).
• Rawson describes the work as similar:


  “Its spare, rather dry brushwork again repeats the deliberately simple, austere quality that is the feature of many so-called literati paintings.”
• Li Cheng was said to “treasure ink like gold”” and did many landscape paintings with diluted ink, thus rendering the scenery like in a dreamy mist. He defined the soft, billowing earthen formations of the Shandong area terrain with “cloudlike” texture, interior layers of graded ink wash bounded by firmly brushed, scallop-edged contours.
• Four Treasures of the Scholar’s Studio or wenfangsibao: 


  paper, brush, ink and inkstone.
• A cake of ink is ground against the surface of the inkstone and water is gradually dropped from a water dropper, gathering in a well at one end of the stone. The brush is then dipped into the well and the depth of intensity of the ink depends on the wetness or dryness of the brush and the amount of water in the ink.
• Ink cakes were made from carbonized pinewood, oil and glue, moulded into cakes or sticks and dried. The most prized inkstones were made of Duan stone from Guangdong province, although the one shown here is made of ceramic.
• Context

  
  

  This painting is unusual, firstly because there is no sign of humanity, and secondly because it has a very specific context of personal loss. Wen Zhengming married the daughter of a high-ranking official and jinshi named Wu Yu around the year 1490. Little is known about Wen's wife herself, whose personal name was not recorded. But after she died in 1542, Wen painted Wintry Trees for a guest who arrived with a gift to mourn her death.
• Philosophical/historical context


  During the Ming dynasty, Emperor Jiajing who reigned from 1521 to 1567 was a fervent follower of Taoism (also known as Daoism) and tried to suppress Buddhism. For Taoism 11 death is not regarded as it is by Christians, as a salvation to escape from this world towards heaven; rather one’s aim in life is to become perfectly aligned with the natural world and with the cosmic forces that sustain it. Although Wen Zhengming is not regarded as a Daoist artist it is interesting to consider the broader context.