Illustrations to Tao Qians Prose Poem Homecoming 歸去來辭書畫卷 - anonymous (Introduction)
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| Illustrations to Tao Qians Prose Poem Homecoming 歸去來辭書畫卷
Artist: anonymous, Chinese, Southern Song dynasty, 13th century Date: 13th century Materials: Ink and colors on silk Dimensions: 30 x 438.6 cm (11 1316 x 172 1116 in.) Museum of Fine Arts, BostonSpecial Chinese and Japanese Fund Museum scroll information: Illustrations to Tao Qians Prose Poem Homecoming 歸去來辭書畫卷 |
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| Introduction Tao Qian 陶潛 (style name: Yuanming 淵明, 365–427) was a famous poet and recluse who lived during the Eastern Jin dynasty 東晉 (265-480). His prose poem Returning Home 歸去來兮辭, illustrated in this handscroll, describes Tao Qian's decision to retreat from his official post in order to return to his family home and to enjoy a rustic life in reclusion in pursuit of self-cultivation while being close to nature. Returning Home is one of Tao Qian's best-known poems, understood as the expression of the moral ideal of a reclusive lifestyle that renounces the worldly values of an official's career and monetary advantages and instead treasures a simple life among fields, gardens, and nature, close to family, and in pursuit of individual interests according to Daoist philosophy. This long handscroll, dated to the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), is an illustration of Tao Qian's poem using the format of alternating calligraphic inscriptions of parts of the poem with the corresponding depiction of individual scenes. This alternation of image and text is a common format that can be found in many Chinese illustrations and in narrative paintings in the handscroll format. It combines the Three Perfections (san jue 三絕) of poetry, calligraphy, and painting. The calligraphic style of the cursive script (cao shu 草書) used in this handscroll to inscribe the poem follows the model of Southern Song Emperor Gaozong 高宗 (reigned 1127-62). The painted scenes make use of so-called 'archaic' stylistic allusions and motifs, for example in the use of firm contour lines, the disregard for spatial recession, and the use of color for rendering trees and other landscape motifs. The handscroll consists of five pictorial and four calligraphic sections beginning with a portrait of Tao Qian, which is not matched by an inscription. All other pictorial sections show a single scene with Tao Qian as its main protagonist illustrating the part of the poem that directly precedes the depicted scene. Neither depicted nor inscribed are the poem's preface, in which Tao Qian explains the circumstances of his retirement from office, and the last section of the poem with its respective illustrations. This missing final section likely consisted of two additional scenes that can be reconstructed on the basis of a very similar handscroll of the same theme in the Freer Gallery in Washington D.C., which is believed to be of slightly earlier date than the Boston handscroll. Scholars believe that both versions, the current one from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the one from the Freer Gallery, are based on the same model, a composition by the Northern Song literati painter Li Gonglin 李公麟 (1049-1106). Reference: Wu Tung (ed.), Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Tang through Yuan Dynasties, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts and Tokyo: Otsuka Kogeisha, 1996, v.1 cat. no. 96, pp.85ff. Wu Tung (ed.), Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Painting, Exhibition Catalog, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1997, cat. no. 89, pp. 191ff. Susan E. Nelson, “Catching Sight of South Mountain: Tao Yuanming, Mount Lu, and the Iconographies of Escape,” Archives of Asian Art 52 (2000/01), pp. 11-43 Elizabeth Brotherton, “Beyond the Written Word: Li Gonglin's Illustrations to Tao Yuanming's "Returning Home",” Artibus Asiae 59, no. 3/4 (2000), pp. 225-263 James Robert Hightower, The Poetry of Tʾao Chʾien, Oxford: Clarendon, 1970 | ||||