This thesis, which focuses on the late Ming and early Qing dynasty Chinese artist Bada Shanren (Zhu Da, 1626-1705), explores three facets of his painting: his gradual artistic development through his bird and flower paintings; his syncretic philosophical references to Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism in his art; and the artistic conversation that occurs between Bada Shanren and later generations. A descendent of the Ming dynasty Prince of Yiyang, Bada was raised and educated in an aristocratic family of collectors, artists, and poets in Jiangxi. He entered the priesthood after the fall of the Ming dynasty, rising to become temple abbot. At the age of 50 he left the temple, but was soon pressured from all directions--to collaborate with the Qing, to serve a Ming revival, and to produce heirs. Feigning insanity, or perhaps temporarily mad, he apparently lived as a hermit for a decade, and then became a professional painter. In the absence of detailed contemporary records, his paintings and cryptic poems survive as the only primary documents of his life.
This thesis takes as its subject a little-studied handscroll painting, Lotus and Birds, painted in 1690 and currently held in the Cincinnati Art Museum. Through the close reading of its thematic and formal properties in the context of other dated works, this paper proposes that it represents a seminal example of a shift that occurred in Bada’s artistic vision. Before 1690, most of his works express his troubled personal feelings as an unfortunate Ming imperial survivor. Henceforth, his painting begins to demonstrate his gradual artistic maturity with greater formal fluency and originality, as well as expressive and psychological power. Through careful examination of dated artwork, the artist’s gradual evolution as a painter will be explored.
Further issues to be examined are both the various art historical styles and syncretic philosophical themes of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism in his art. Was he a mad man or an eccentric individualist? I will explore this question from an art historical perspective that delves into a larger movement of individualism during the seventeenth century. In conclusion, we find that the stylistic evolution in Bada Shanren’s painting came to a crucial point of transition around 1690 that is well exemplified in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Lotus and Birds. New visions of space and newly self-expressive brushstrokes create images to challenge the viewer. At the same time, his changes in life status were intertwined with philosophical and religious impulses that emerge in this period as a form of a philosophical syncretism. The Cincinnati handscroll brings together these two aspects of his art, his spontaneous brushwork and his profoundly individualistic subject matter in a way that comes to define Bada Shanren’s most characteristic works of art.