Ni Zan

During the 1340s a number of droughts and floods caused a famine throughout Ni Zan's region, which subsequently led to peasant revolts. These revolts peaked in 1350 due to the government’s use of forced labor to repair the dikes on the

Ni Zan's landscapes after 1345 all take very much the same form: ink-monochrome paintings of widely separated riverbanks rendered in sketch brushwork and foreground trees silhouetted against the expanse of water. His sparse landscapes never represent people and defy many traditional concepts of Chinese painting. Many of his works hardly represent the natural settings they were intended to depict. Indeed, Ni Zan consciously used his art as a medium of self-expression. In 1364, he said “I use bamboo painting to write out the exhilaration in my breast, that is all. Why should I worry whether it shows likeness or not?”

Ni Zan travelled around southern China during the collapse of the Yuan Dynasty and spent his time painting. During his lifetime, his work was highly valued and in itself was enough to pay for the hospitality provided by his friends as he travelled. He returned to his hometown in 1371 after the establishment of the

Paintings

• 
  Ni Zan, Water and Bamboo Dwelling, collection of the National Museum of China
• 
  Ni Zan, Trees in a River Valley in Yü shan, private collection, New York City
• 
  The Distant Cold Flow Pine, collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing.
• 
  Bamboo, and Elegant Stone, collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing
• 
  Twin Trees by the South Bank (Annan shuangshu), 1353, collection of the Princeton University Art Museum

Notes

References

• Masterpieces of Chinese Art (page 90), by Rhonda and Jeffrey Cooper, Todtri Productions, 1997.
  ISBN 1-57717-060-1
• Cahill, James. Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty: 1279-1368. New York: Weatherhill, 1976. 114-120.
• Fong, Wen C. Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th-14th Century. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.
• Siren, Osvald. Chinese Painting: Leading masters and principles. Vol. IV. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1973. 79-84.
• Xin, Yan, Nie Chongzhen, Lang Shaojin, Richard M. Barnhart, James Cahill, and Wu Hung. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.
• Vandier-Nicolas, Nicole, Peinture chinoise et tradition lettrée, Paris : Seuil. 173-177.
• Ci hai bian ji wei yuan hui (辞海编辑委员会). Ci hai (辞海). Shanghai: Shanghai ci shu chu ban she (上海辞书出版社), 1979.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ni Zan.

• Ni Zan and his painting gallery at China Online Museum
• Met Museum
• Sung and Yuan paintings, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Ni Zan (see list of paintings)