Dignity, sympathy, participation
Sympathetic observation
| Sympathy also found anthropomorphic expression in the conventionally feminine area of 'flower and insect' painting. These album pages of WEN Shu (文俶1595-1643) - scion of a significant Suzhou clan and a descendent of the painter WEN Zhengming (文徵明 1470-1559) - show a crisp and emotionally quick handling of shapes and colours. In the left image, a bird holds in its mouth a blue berry that echoes with perverse precision a circular hole on a leaf that reveals the buff colour of the bird's body. Blue feathers are seen through another hole, cut in a shape that is equivalent to several others across the composition. This yields a very formal, elegant game, the bird felt as a clever and poetic participant. A more emotional gambit is seen in the right image, being the last page of the same album. Here a bird is hunched and its narrowed eye seems to continue a set of knots in the branch on which it is perched. While it might be that the bird is huddled against an unseen cold wind, the whole composition also acts to express a very human angst or unease. However, this tone is not particularly exaggerated, being executed in decorative, even charming terms - and altogether much lighter in mood than the sometimes darkly ironic work of her more famous contemporary CHEN Hongshou 陈洪绶 (1598 – 1652). |   |   | |
| WEN Shu 文俶 (1595-1643) Album of 8 leaves (details) Ink and colour on silk, 25 x 16.5 cm Private collection |