Ni Zan (1301 – 1374 AD) was one of the Yuan Dynasty’s (1271 – 1368 AD) great painters and calligraphers.
The first half of his life was spent in luxury on his estate.
The second half was spent in poverty wandering the lakes of his home region.
He was a great eccentric, who often referring to himself as ‘Lazy Zan’ (懒瓒) and ‘Ni the Pedant’ (倪迂).
Many consider him one of the earliest and purest examples of Chinese independent scholars (文人).
Contents
Biography
Early life
Ni Zan (倪瓒), originally named Ni Ting, courtesy name Tai Yu, was born into a wealthy merchant family in Wuxi (Jiangsu Province) in somewhere in the early 1300s.
(His date of birth is most commonly given as 1301, but some scholars now believe it was 1306).
His father died when he was young. His elder half-brother, Ni Zhaokui, a distinguished Daoist master, inherited and managed the family estate.
This left Ni Zan free to pursue his passion: the arts. The family owned a large estate, on which Ni built a library and studio, which houses his collection of calligraphy, paintings, and bronzes.
It was named the ‘Pure and Secluded Pavillion’ (清闭阁), which reflected Ni Zan’s personality as well as the trend of naming parts of gardens (arguably began by the poet Bai Juyi (772 – 846) in during the late Tang dynasty).
A contemporary wrote an account of the Pavillion and other buildings:
The Pure and Secluded Pavillion was covered with blue carpets and equipped with a hundred pairs or rope slippers, to that guests could change into them before entering [….] The Cave of Snowy Cranes was covered with white carpets [….] in front of these buildings were planted flowers of many different colours, and the flower beds were lined with white glazed tiles. When the flowers were watered, the fallen petals were picked up with long bamboo pole so that the beds would not be dirtied by footprints.
– Quoted in, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th – 14th Century by Wen C. Fong (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), p. 480 – 1
Ni painted and wrote calligraphy, gaining a reputation for his skills, scholarship, and creativity in both (interlinked) domains, as well as a reputation as an eccentric.
Anecdotes on eccentricity
人言我迂谬，今固自若，素履本如此，岂以人言易吾操哉。
-Ni Zan, ‘Preface to the Clear Melancholy Pavillion Collection’
People call me a simpleton and an eccentric, and since that’s my nature, and I’m satisfied with myself that way, why should I alter my principles because of what people say?
Ni Zan was known for his fastidiousness.
Today, it would be likely be labelled OCD. He washed his hands obsessively and avoided objects – and people – he considered dirty.
He even allegedly had the Chinese parasol trees in his garden washed daily! And ordered servants to pick up fallen petals and leaves using poles to avoid contact with flowerbeds.
One story has it that the painter Yang Weizhen (1296 – 1270) once drank wine from a dancing girl’s shoe at a party and encouraged other guests to do the same.
Ni responded by pouring the wine on the floor, storming off, and refusing to speak to Yang afterwards.
Another has it that Ni was once due to spend the evening with a famous courtesan named Zhao Mei’er.
He made her bathe so many times that when the sun rose that’s all that had happened. Zhao was said to have often recounted the story in fits of laughter.
On the whole, eccentrics were appreciated throughout Chinese history, especially in painting. In the Daoist classic, Zhuangzi (4th century BC), an influential representation of a painter was given:
宋元君将画图，众史皆至，受揖而立，舐笔和墨，在外者半。有一史后至者，儃儃然不趋，受揖不立，因之舍。公使人视之，则解衣盘礴，裸袖握管。君曰：“可矣，是真画者也。”When Lord Yuan of Song wanted some pictures painted. Many clerks filled his court, paid their respects, licked their brushes and prepared their ink. There were so many of them that many queued outside. One calmly sauntered in late and paid his respects. Instead of waiting in line, he withdrew to his quarters.The Lord sent someone to see what he was doing. He was found naked and sitting down cross-legged.“Excellent!” the Lord said, “That is a true painter!”
– Zhuangzi (21.07)
Inherits family property
When Ni Zhaokui died in 1328, Ni Zan became heir to the family’s wealth and property.
Despite his lack of practical experience and inclination, most of the following decade appears to have continued on the same.
Ni focused on collecting and creating art on his vast estate.
However, towards the end of the 1330s, problems rose across the Mongol-ruled empire China lived under.
Mongol taxes and break up of Ni’s family estate
Ni Zan’s home was in a prosperous part of China, often referred to as the Jiangnan (‘south of the river’) region. Around 90% of Yuan China’s tax revenue came from here.
Between 1342 – 45, extreme cold, famine, floods, droughts, and epidemics occurred in many parts of China.
The Mongol administration responded by raising taxes, especially in Jiangnan. So, Ni Zan began either giving away or selling property to his family and friends.
(It’s also believed that at one point Ni gave a lot of money away, including to charities, in the hope of gaining an official position that did not come.)
Thereafter, Ni’s life took a new turn. He took to wandering around the Jiang’nan region with his family, especially the areas between Wuxi and Suzhou.
They mostly lived on a houseboat. But they stayed variously at friends’ homes, Buddhist monasteries, and even a small home named ‘The Snail Hut’.
Ni often repaid his hosts with works of paintings and calligraphy, which both he and they knew were valuable commodities.
Some later commentators wanted to emphasis the casual nature of this.
After all, the ideal of a ‘pure’ artist spontaneously gifting hosts paintings was appealing to the literati ideal. But the reality seems to have been crasser than this at times:
Lately when I come to town [presumably Suzhou] people asking to paint often insist that I paint in a certain way and finish at a certain time. They even resort to insults, angry words, or worse. This is not fair. Would anyone blame a eunuch for not growing a beard? What have I done to deserve such trouble?
quoted from Wen Fong, Images of the Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 126
The Mongols fall in Jiangnan
世情如火心如水
Ni Zan, from ‘Fair and Foul’
屋里须教有主人
Worldly matters are like fire, my mind is like water.
In the home [mind], must educate to be the master.
In 1351, the Mongols forced approximately 150,000 men into labour on a project rechannelling part of the Grand Canal.
This helped spark the Red Turban revolt the following year. Thereafter, the Jiangnan region was ruled by the rebels.
The brother of the Red Turban’s leader sent Ni a gift of silk and money as an invitation to work for the rebel’s administration as a painter.
Ni ripped up the silk and returned the money. He was punished for this with a severe beating, during which he stayed silent.
When asked later on why he hadn’t spoken, he replied that it would have been vulgar to say anything.
However, Ni likely got off lightly. Many artists and officials that joined the rebels would suffer a fate worse than they would have under the Mongols.
(One of many examples in this regard is the calligrapher Rao Jie (ca. 1300 – 1367AD).)
By early 1363, Ni’s wife had passed away. And in 1366, Ni went into hiding in the Songjiang region (today a district of Shanghai).
He was able re-emerge the following year, when Red Turban’s gained a new leader: Zhu Yuanzhang (1328 – 98 AD), who became the Emperor Hongwu (r. 1368 – 98 AD).
The Ming dynasty
Mongol rule of China completely collapsed in 1368.
The early years of the Chinese-ruled Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644 AD) were marked by brutal purges and strict authoritarianism.
Fortunately, Ni Zan avoided an official position. He returned to his hometown (Wuxi), where he fell ill after a banquet, and died at his son-in-law’s home in autumn 1374.
Ni Zan the artist
Painting
Yuan dynasty landscape painting transformed the genre.
Ni Zan’s has was considered one of the Four Great Yuan Masters (of painting) (元四家) by the great Ming dynasty painter and calligrapher Dong Qichang (1555 – 1636), alongside:
- Huang Gongwang (1269 – 1354)
- Wu Zhen (1280 – 1354)
- Wang Meng (1308 – 1385)
(A different version of this list – not by Dong – has Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322) in place of Ni.)
He was much admired as a painter during his lifetime. And status as a great painter was secure shortly after he passed away.
Accounts note that owning a Ni Zan painting was seen as a status symbol during the early Ming. This created a high demand which led to a large number of forgeries.
Ni was most famous for his landscape paintings.
The surviving authentic pieces display a distinctly remote and pure atmosphere. They often feature bare scenes, where the absence of human presence is illustrated by empty pavilions and rivers without boats.
The plain quality of his paintings is often further enhanced by the lack of variety in vegetation and landscape features.
Literati painters (which Ni Zan was) would often define this quality as pingdan (平淡), which can be translated as ‘plainness’ or ‘bland’, but which doesn’t carry the negative connotations of the English word.
He was particularly influenced by the style of Dong Yuan (d. 962 AD), who helped define the Jiangnan style of landscape painting that blossomed during the Song dynasty.
He was also greatly influenced by his friend and fellow Great Yuan Master, Huang Gongwang.
Huang set landscape painting on a new trajectory, and so was more influential than Ni Zan in the long run. But he also influenced Ni, too.
As he developed as a painter, Ni gravitated towards a set formula of trees and empty pavilions in the foreground with water and distant hills in the background.
He wrote openly of focusing on making his paintings beyond representation. This theme was passed down from the writings of famous literati, especially Su Shi (1037 – 1101 AD), who had written:
– Su Shi
论画以形似
见与儿童邻
If anyone discussed painting in terms of formal likeness,
his understanding is nearly that of a child.
Ni Also subscribed to the notion, popularised in part by Su, that the Tang dynasty poet and painter Wang Wei (701 – 762 AD) was a founder of literati painting.
Calligraphy
Ni was famous for his calligraphy as well as his painting.
It wasn’t until the Yuan dynasty that that writing directly onto paintings became commonplace.
Calligraphy, painting and poetry had long been linked. Later commentators often refer to these collectively as the three perfections.
In Ni’s work, his distinct calligraphy often compliments his pictures (and vice versa).
He favoured a loose, natural standard script (with aspects of running script) influenced by the work of Wang Xizhi (303 – 361 AD) and Chu Suiliang (596 – 658 AD).
There’s also a clear trace of clerical script in many of his characters, especially in the broad width of particular strokes and character structures.
The slender, sharp strokes also add to the distinct, idiosyncratic tone of his writing. It matches the bare, autumn atmosphere of many of his landscapes.