Bada Shanren
Zhu Da, also known by his pen name Bada Shanren, was a late-Ming and early-Qing dynasty Chinese painter, calligrapher, and poet. He was born in Nanchang, Jiangxi, in 1626, at during the Ming-Qing Transition. Zhu was mentally ill and displayed erratic behavior. He was related to the House of Zhu, which was destroyed and executed by the new Qing dynasty. Fearing that he would also be purged and executed, he fled to a Buddhist temple and learned the teachings of Chan Buddhism, becoming a monk for 30 years.
He spent most of his early to mid-life in the Buddhist monkhood, returning to Nanchang when he was about fifty years old. He embarked on an artistic career soon after reentering secular life in 1680, producing works that featured his calligraphy, painting, and poetry. Most of the time, he painted simple subjects like flowers, plants, and animals and kept most of the given space empty. Toward the end of his life, he started painting more landscapes.
Some of his artwork were metaphors on the fall of the Ming dynasty and its failure after being destroyed by the Qing. His poems often included obscure references.
Background
Bada Shanren lived during a tumultuous time in China, witnessing the Qing dynasty's conquest of the Ming dynasty and execution of the House of Zhu. In the early 1600s, around the time Bada was born, the Ming government was disintegrating from factional conflict and rebellion. Facing a rebellion led by Li Zicheng in 1644, the last Ming emperor committed suicide. Wu Sangui asked for help from the Qing dynasty to crush Li Zicheng's rebellion. The Qing then proceeded to seize Beijing, the imperial capital, and overthrew the Ming dynasty.The Qing also defeated Ming loyalists, known as yimin. Zhu Youlang, the Prince of Gui, was crowned the Yongli emperor of the shortlived Southern Ming dynasty in 1647, centered around Yunnan with Kunming as its capital. In 1662, the Qing dynasty and Wu Sangui executed Zhu by strangling. Wu took control over Yunnan and established the short-lived Zhou dynasty. In 1673, Wu led the Revolt of the Three Feudatories against the new Qing government, but failed. The Qing successfully suppressed the rebellion in 1681.
Biography
Early life and family
A descendant of a Ming imperial prince, Bada was born into a family of accomplished scholars and artists. His grandfather Zhu Duozheng was a poet, painter, calligrapher, and seal-carver, and his father was most likely Zhu Moujin, a painter and calligrapher mute since birth. Bada grew up under such artistic influences, studying poetry, calligraphy, and painting through his family's works. Bada also received a classical education and passed the first-level test of the civil service examinations in the early 1640s. He married his first wife in his late teens, with whom he had at least one child.Monastic life
After the Qing dynasty takeover of China, Bada fled to a Buddhist temple west of Nanchang, fearing for his safety given his connection to the House of Zhu, the Ming imperial family. The Qing dynasty had purged and executed Zhu Youlang and many other members of the Zhu family that ruled over the Ming. In 1645, he joined the monastic order at the age of nineteen. He spent about thirty years in the monkhood, studying the teachings of Chan Buddhism and the styles of past masters of calligraphy and painting.Later life
Around 1680, Bada left the priesthood and refashioned himself as a professional painter and poet. He was dissatisfied with his monastic life all throughout the 1670s, during which he sought relationships outside the monastic order. He met the poet Qiu Lian and Qiu's father-in-law Hu Yitang in the early 1670s. Despite his abandonment of priestly duties, Bada was still influenced by Buddhist teachings and remained close friends with several Buddhist monks.The Portrait of Geshan, painted in 1674, reflects Bada's refashioning from a monk to scholarly artist. According to Wang Fangyu, a scholar and collector of Bada Shanren's work, the straw hat and loose, long robes make Bada look more like a scholar than a monk.
Bada also remarried soon after returning to Nanchang in 1680 but within a few years became single, dissatisfied with the marriage. For a while, his paintings reflected his unhappiness from the failed marriage. During this time, Bada also showed signs of eccentric behavior. Many believed he was feigning madness to eschew political involvement. From 1684 onward, Bada mostly stayed put in Nanchang, devoting himself to painting and calligraphy, and in the mid-1690s built a painting studio. With his scanty earnings, he lived in a small residential quarter in the southern part of Nanchang.
Artistic pursuits
Calligraphy
Bada's family members, including his grandfather and father, were calligraphers, whose works Bada studied from a young age. During his early years in the monastery, Bada practiced calligraphy by studying the works of Tang and Song calligraphers. Not yet settled on a style, Bada employed a wide range of script types, including the standard script kaishu, fully cursive script caoshu, and semicursive script xingshu. His standard scripts were modelled on the precisely executed kaishu script of Tang calligrapher Ouyang Xun. In his cursive and semicursive scripts, Bada emulated the swift and fluid brushstrokes of Ming calligrapher Dong Qichang, achieving the flying white calligraphic effect. Toward the end of his priesthood, Bada began to explore the exaggerated cursive script of Song calligrapher Huang Tingjian.After leaving the monastery, Bada continued to study the Song calligrapher's writing, for instance copying his essay titled “Praising the Virtue of Wine.” He rendered it in a style not identical to Huang Tingjian's but combinative of various script types. His horizontal strokes were attenuated like Huang Tingjian's, while his corner strokes were sharp like Ouyang Xun's. Through the 1680s, Bada wrote in a style reflective of a balance between controlled and exaggerated forms. By 1689, he had developed his own style. Starting in 1690, Bada began to study the styles of Wei and Jin calligraphers like Wang Xizhi and incorporated them in his writing. His brushstrokes became rounded and centered, deviating from his earlier characteristic sharp strokes. Despite having established his own style, Bada remained devoted to the study of past calligraphic masters, including Wang Xizhi and the monk Huaisu, in the final years of his life.
Painting
Bada Shanren's earliest extant paintings were produced during his years in the Buddhist monastery where he practiced painting as a hobby. He painted according to the literati tradition, studying the styles of past painters like Shen Zhou and Xu Wei. The subject of his paintings were simple objects like flowers, fruits, and vegetables. From 1681 to 1684, Bada treated painting as an outlet for his emotions, particularly his dissatisfaction with his second marriage. He expanded his repertoire of subjects to include animals like birds and fish in addition to flowers and vegetables. His earliest surviving landscape paintings are dated to this period. From 1684 to 1690, Bada most frequently painted myna birds, lotuses, and rocks. From 1690 to 1694, he shifted his attention to fish, which he often depicted alone at the center of an empty composition. Starting in 1693, landscapes became a major subject of his work.The brushwork in Bada's paintings closely mirrored his calligraphy. The paintings from his Buddhist years featured strokes consisting of thin and strong lines – reflective of a calligraphic style modeled on Ouyang Xun's writing. His brushstrokes in the Ink Flowers handscroll, dated 1666, were rendered like the diagonal strokes of the kaishu script. He moved the brush as he did in his calligraphy: by first straightening the tip of the brush and moving slowly and then by lifting the brush and moving more rapidly in the flying white manner. Bada's paintings from 1689 and 1690 mirrored his newly established style of calligraphy, featuring vigorous brushstrokes.