Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322 AD) (pronounced jow [rhymes with ‘cow’] mung-foo) is a simultaneously admired yet frowned upon figure in Chinese history.
He worked for the Mongols when they conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty (1271 – 1368).
So, a shadow has long covered his political reputation.
But his artistic talent shines through it.
Let’s look at his biography, calligraphy, and painting.
Contents
Biography
Family background and early life
Zhao Mengfu (赵孟頫 [Zhào Mèngfǔ]), courtesy name Zi’ang (子昂), was born in Wucheng County (today’s Wuxing District of Huzhou, Zhejiang Province) during the late Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD).
(Today, the Song dynasty is generally divided into the Northern Song (960 – 1127) and the Southern Song (1127 – 1279) periods.)
The latter had lost half of its territory to the Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty (1115 – 1234). However, it was still a prosperous and highly cultured society)
He was an 11th generation descendent of the founder of the Song dynasty, Emperor Taizu (927 – 976 AD) via Taizu’s fourth son Zhao Defang (959 – 981 AD) (the Prince of Qin).
His great-grandfather (Zhao Shichui) and grandfather (Zhao Xiyan) had served the Southern Song government.
As too did his father, Zhao Yuyin (赵与訔) (1213 – 1265 AD), a government official and envoy known for his skill as a poet.
His mother, surnamed Qiu, was a concubine (a common practice during the period).
And he had 14 sisters and 6 elder brothers. It’s not clear who the mothers of his sisters were, but it is known that his four eldest brothers were half-brothers.
Zhao Mengfu’s name
‘Zhao’ (赵) was famously the surname of the Song royal family. (In Chinese, the surname comes first).
‘Mengfu’ (孟頫) is a given name:
- Meng (孟) means ‘obedience’ or ‘order’
- Fu (頫) means ‘bend’ of ‘bow’
This choice of given name was part of an aristocratic tradition. Each generation of his brand of the Zhao family kept the same first given character (in Zhao’s generation, Meng).
The second character (Fu) rhymed with many of his cousins’ names and contained the same character component (頁).
Zhao’s childhood
Zhao’s father passed away aged 53 in the Southern Song capital of Lin’an (today’s Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province). Zhao himself was just 11 years old at the time.
Afterwards, his mother guided his and his brothers’ education.
It’s likely that without the head of the household, the family was no longer financially well off.
Zhao was said to be a bright child with artistic and literary talents.
His older cousin was the famous painter and official Zhao Mengjian (1199 – 1264 AD). Zhao admired his cousin’s work:
吾自少好画水仙吾自少好画水仙，日数十纸皆不能臻其极……今观吾宗子固所作墨花，于纷披侧塞中各就条理，亦一难也，我亦自谓不能过之。
– Zhao Mengfu
From my youth on I liked to paint several dozen sheets of narcissus (daffodil) daily, but I was not able to achieve perfection…. Now, when I look at my uncle Zigu’s [Wang Mengjian] paintings of ink flowers, with all their crowding and scattering, each in its right place, I realise this is an extremely difficult feat. I certainly couldn’t surpass this.
At 14, he passed an examination that enabled him to receive a hereditary rank. This earned him an official position as an assistant to a military officer.
Later reports stated that his career look promising to those around him.
Either way, the prospect of a career in the Song government was soon to be closed – to everyone.
The Mongols take over China
When Zhao was 24 years old, the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) took over all of China. Like many others, Zhao went back to his home town (Wuxing) and lied low.
He spent the next few years in a state of semi-seclusion, studying and practicing poetry, calligraphy, and painting.
A sense of shock and shame at the Chinese situation prevailed. Until recently, the Mongols were an insignificant group of barbarians in many Chinese peoples’ eyes.
Now, with abrupt and overpowering violence, they had taken over the greatest civilisation under heaven.
The Eight Talents of Wuxing
Zhao’s circle of artistic friends during the immediate aftermath of the Mongol invasion were (retrospectively) known as the ‘Eight Talents of Wuxing’ (吴兴八俊).
This group would likely have met up for drinking parties and sightseeing trips.
Throughout Chinese history, literary gatherings were popular places to exchange and compare poems, calligraphy and paintings.
There are two alternative lists of who the Eight Talents are. A later writer lists the Eight as, aside from Zhao, including:
- Qian Xuan (1239 – 1299): A painter
- Wang Zizhong: A poet
- Mou Yinglong (1247 – 1324): A scholar and calligrapher
- Xiao Zizhong
- Chen Tianyi
- Chen Zhongxin
- Yao Shi
Aside from Zhao and the first three names of this list, the others are relatively unknown today.
And in 1287, by Zhao listed eight friends he wanted to introduce to Wu Cheng:
- Ao Ji: Zhao’s former teacher
- Qian Xuan (see above list)
- Zhang Fuheng
- Yao Shi
- Cheng Kangzu
- Deng Wenyuan
- Dai Biaoyuan
(This list was handed over alongside an inscription Zhao had made of some of Zhu Xi’s (1130 – 1200) poems.)
Many had likely lost property and incomes and needed to teach or sell their art to make a living.
Kublai Khan’s envoy looks for Southern officials
In 1268, when Zhao was 32, the Mongol Emperor Khubilai Khan (1215 – 1294 AD) sent an envoy to the south of China to recruit celebrated officials.
Zhao’s name was placed first on the list – likely by his recruiter, Cheng Jufu (1249-1318).
It had long been a custom for the Chinese elite to refuse to serve new dynasties, especially foreign ones like the Mongols. This attitude was particularly prevalent in southern China.
Most of northern China had been ruled by the Mongols for a few decades already by this point.
And before that, it (the north) had been ruled for over a century by the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115 – 1234 AD).
In other words, the south was a stronghold of loyalty to the Chinese Song dynasty that the Mongols had destroyed.
There was perhaps added pressure on Zhao not to serve the Mongols because of his ancestry.
Many of his associates, including his fellow Wuxing literati Qian Xuan (c. 1235 – c. 1307), refused to do so.
However, Zhao and 20 others took up the envoy’s offer. They travelled north to the Yuan capital that was still under construction, Dadu – today’s Beijing. Zhao made his trip there in 1286.
This was around the same time the Venetian merchant Marco Polo visited the previous Mongol capital – Shangdu (known in English as Xanadu), 300 km north of Dadu.
[the palace walls are] covered in gold and silver and decorated with pictures of dragons and birds and horsemen and various breeds of beasts and scenes of battle…. the whole building is at once so immense that no man in the world, granted that he had the power to effect it, could imagine any improvement in design or execution.
– Timothy Brook, The Great State (London: Profile Books Ltd., 2019), p.31
Polo’s account would later inspire Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
– Extract from ‘Kubla Khan’ (1816) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills…
History’s judgement of Zhao’s career choice
Zhao’s decision to work for the Mongols was seen as morally wrong by some at the time. Some of his former friends even refused to have any further contact with him.
By contrast, those that refused to work for the Mongols were classed as yimin (遗民) – ‘remnant/leftover subjects (of the Song dynasty)’. Their position was based on their interpretation of Confucian values related to loyalty and integrity.
Another artist, Gong Kai (1222 – 1307 AD) is an example of one of these leftover subjects.
Gong would have been more financially secure if he had stayed in his relatively minor government position.
Instead, he was reduced to poverty as he could only make money from occasionally selling his calligraphy and painting. He is said to have sometimes needed to use his kneeling son’s back as a table.
A similar situation unfolded when the Ming dynasty (1379 – 1644 AD) was taken over by the Jurchen-ruled Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911 AD).
One Ming leftover subject, the calligrapher Fu Shan (1607 – 1684) once bluntly summarised of his thoughts on Zhao Mengfu: ‘Bandit’ (匪人).
Centuries after Zhao’s lifetime, rumours persisted had visited his uncle, Zhao Mengjian, to tell him about his appointment to the Mongol court. And that his uncle refused the visit and washed the seat Zhao had waited on afterwards.
However, Zhao Mengjian had passed away many years before appointment.
Even in the 1980’s, negative judgement was still being passed on Zhao for not declining the Mongol invite. The commonly held belief that calligraphy reflects character was applied to criticism of him.
Zhao, though a famous calligrapher, as a person had no backbone… The very fluidity of his calligraphy is thought to reflect the instability of his character, and his style is often considered unsuitable for beginning calligraphers to copy.
– Liu Rong, ‘The Wonderful World of Calligraphy’, China Reconstructs (November 1985)
Others counter this line of attack by stating that Zhao did a lot to preserve and even advance Chinese culture and the arts at a difficult time. Much, much more than most of his critics could ever dream of doing…
How did Zhao feel about working for the Mongols?
Zhao left hints that he was ashamed of having worked for the Mongols (see below for his poem ‘Warning to Self’).
He also expressed a concept called chaoyin (朝隐) in his art and poetry (see below, ‘The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu’).
This means a prioritisation of inner cultivation over (outer) court life, sense of spiritual detachment from the everyday affairs of government even as you engage directly in them.
The good Zhao did for the Chinese
Zhao occasionally used his position to influence politics in a way that was good for the Chinese.
For example, he helped bring back the imperial examination system (though it was not favourable to southern Chinese subjects). And he argued against corporal punishment for the literati.
Zhao also collected artworks all over China as he travelled for work.
This put him in touch with the works of and legacy of Northern Song artwork, which had been cut off from Southern China in the century before Mongol rule united China.
His collecting and artistry also no doubt helped to unify and revive Chinese culture.
The same applies to his promotion of Confucian culture later in various roles, including president of the Hanlin Academy, official historian, and more.
Later career and life
Overall, Zhao rose to a high level as an official and served under five emperors. Overall, the period in which he lived was one of political and economic stability.
The Yuan dynasty from the moment Khubilai unified the realm experienced peace for sixty or seventy years. Those who lived were properly nourished, and those who died were properly buried.
– Ye Ziqi, The Scribbler. Quoted from The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties by Timothy Brook (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 77
However, Zhao’s career, like the Yuan dynasty itself, was not all smooth sailing. And it ended on a bad note.
1286 – 1292 AD: A favourite of the khan
The first eight years of Zhao’s reign took place under Kubilai Khan’s reign.
Kubilai was also clearly impressed with Zhao, he twice commissioned paintings from him.
He is said to have respected Zhao’s passion and forthrightness in court debates (an area that could easily land officials in trouble). He referred to Zhao as:
A man at home among immortals.
Kubilai gave Zhao a large wedding gift on money in 1286, when Zhao married his second wife, Guan Daosheng (管道昇) (1262 – 1319). She was also an excellent painter and calligrapher in her own right.
Together, they would have four children, including Zhao Yong (赵雍) (1289 – 1369), their second son, who became a well-known artist.
One anecdote has it that after hearing Zhao fell of a horse along a certain track, Kubilai ordered the walls near the scene widened.
1292 – 1295 AD: In Jinan
Zhao outspokenness and preferential treatment from Kubulai made him enemies in court.
At one point, in 1292, he fell afoul of internal political struggles and was sent to govern Jinan, Shandong Province.
Here, he was investigated by the Mongol surveillance commissioner: Weihacihasun. No charges were made, and a painting gifted to a Chinese surveillance commissioner (named Feiqing) suggests that a degree of protection had been needed.
1295 – 1299 AD: On sick leave
After a brief return to the capital in 1295, Zhao – now aged 43 – moved home to Wuxing on sick leave. This could have been related to his fear for his own safety from court rivals.
For the first year at least, he was at home in Wuxing. Here he appears to have led an essentially leisurely retirement, continuing to develop his painting and calligraphy.
After this, he travelled back and forth to the capital and elsewhere.
1300 – 1310 AD: In Hangzhou
For the first decade of the 14th century, Zhao worked in the former Southern Song capital, Hangzhou.
His official position was as the superintendent of Confucian Education in the region.
1310 – 1319 AD: Pinnacle of official career
In 1310, Zhao was recalled to the capital, where he was soon appointed to the highest position of his career: the head of the Hanlin Academy.
The Hanlin Academy was essentially the ministry of education – which essentially meant the ministry for imperial examanations. (Schools in China were privately run).
As the examination system was ultimately designed to select officials, it played a crucial role in how the empire was run.
By this point, Zhao’s reputation as a great calligrapher and artist had long been well established.
In 1317, he noted that so many people had arrived at his brother’s house with requests for paintings and calligraphy that it seemed like a market.
1319 – 1322 AD: Retirement and passing
Zhao’s time in the capital came to an end when his wife became ill. The emperor granted his leave to accompany her back home but she died en route.
Grieving, he turned even further to the Chan Buddhism that had sustained him and his wife throughout their lives. He also continued to paint and write.
Zhao died in 1322, aged 68.
Five years earlier, he had written this short poem:
齿豁童头六十三，
– ‘Admonition to Self’ (自警) by Zhao Mengfu
一生事事总堪惭。
唯余笔砚情犹在，
留与人间作笑谈。
Long in the tooth, aged of 63,
Ashamed of many things done in life.
Only with [what came from my] brushes and inkstones
I have left behind [things for] people to be amused by and discuss.
China after Zhao
In 1368, approximately 44 years after Zhao’s death, the Chinese rose up and expelled the Mongols.
However, some Chinese officials who had worked for the Mongols refused to work for the new Ming dynasty.
Zhao Mengfu’s art
Artistic theory
Chinese artistic theory – especially as it pertained to the literati – was greatly advanced by towering Song dynasty intellectual figure Su Shi (1037 – 1101 AD). Members of his artistic circle also contributed to it.
Zhao did not elaborate a particularly detailed artistic philosophy. This is surprising because he was, after all, the leading figure of Yuan dynasty literati art.
One point he did come back to a lot was how important it was for artists to possess guyi – ‘a sense of antiquity’.
作画贵有故意。若无古意，虽工无益。今人但知用笔纤细，傅色浓艳，便自谓能手，殊不知古意既亏，百病横生，岂可观也。吾所作画，似乎简率，然识者知其近古，放以为佳。
– Zhao Mengfu
A sense of antiquity is essential in painting. If it isn’t there, then skilful works are without value. Modern painters only know how to use the brush for detail and abundantly apply colours – they then think they are competent artists. If a sense of antiquity is lacking, many types of faults will appear in a work, and why should anyone bother looking at it? What I paint seems to be summary and rough, but connoisseurs realise that it is close to the ancients, and so they consider it beautiful.
In practical terms, this was achieved by studying and diligently practicing the old forms of painting and calligraphy.
Calligraphy
In learning calligraphy, brush method should be given priority, though efforts must also be made on studying characters’ structures. After all, character structure changes over time, whilst brush method doesn’t change over time.
– Zhao Mengfu, from ‘On Calligraphy’
Many of Zhao’s contemporaries recognised his status as a great calligrapher. And today, he is generally considered to be the greatest calligrapher of the Yuan dynasty.
Others have gone further and ranked him as the greatest calligrapher since the Song dynasty (690 – 1279 AD) or even earlier than that.
He is particularly famous for his standard (or regular) script form and the small-standard variation of it.
As its name suggests, standard script is the straightforward way of writing characters. This means its characters are written out with minimum variation or deviation from their set stroke order.
He is also famous for his running script, which is the semi-cursive form of standard script. In other words, standard script in ‘quite fast’ handwriting.
And some critics say his finest work is the variation of that – running-cursive script. This is running script, which is semi-cursive, with elements of the fully cursive script (i.e., the extremely fast handwritten version of regular script).
Zhao was also a keen practitioner of older Chinese scripts. These include, clerical script – the script used during the first unified empire of China (the Qin, 221 – 246 BC). And the even more ancient script that clerical was directly developed from, seal script.
The Yuan dynasty critic Xian Yushu (1257 – 1302 AD) wrote:
子昂篆，李，正，行，颠草，为当代第一，小楷又为子昂诸第一。
– Xian Yushu
Zi’ang’s [Zhao Mengfu] seal, clerical, standard, running, and wild-cursive scripts are this era’s best, and his small-standard script is the best of all of his styles.
Zhao’s calligraphy in all scripts is often described and gentle, refined, and well-proportioned. Many have pointed out its grounding in the great calligraphy of the past.
The Qing dynasty Scholar Bao Shichen (1775—1855) wrote that when glancing at Zhao’s calligraphy, one simply sees Zhao’s calligraphy.
But, he continued, when one looks carefully, one can see the hands of Wang Xizhi (303 – 361 AD) and his son Wang Xianzhi (344 – 386), Li Yong (674 – 746 AD), and Chu Suiliang (596 – 658 AD).
Painting
It is difficult to paint, but it is even more difficult to understand painting. I like painting horses, because I have talent and can depict them with skill. In this painting, I feel I can match the Tang masters. There must be people in the world with the great vision [to recognise this]
– Zhao Mengfu
Zhao specialised in both landscapes and figure painting. In both, he emphasised the study of older models.
And like many Chinese literati artists, he aimed at expressing inner sentiments above accurate and technical representation.
Yuan dynasty landscape painting, heavily influenced by Zhao, transformed the genre forever. He appears to have directly known and inspired the Four Great Masters of the Yuan (元四家):
- Huang Gongwang (1269 – 1354 AD)
- Wu Zhen (1280 – 1354)
- Ni Zan (1301 – 1374)
- Wang Meng (1308 – 1385) (Zhao’s grandson)
The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu (?1286 AD)
The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu (幼舆丘壑) is Zhao’s earliest known painting.
It depicts the Eastern Jin dynasty official Xie Youyu (280 – 322 AD), who was said to embody the chaoyin ideal of mental and spiritual detachment from contact with worldly affairs.
The painter Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406) had also painted on the same theme. Both Gu and Zhao knew of Xie’s alleged reply to be asked to compare himself to another official. Xie said that he himself simply excelled in ‘a single hill, a single stream’.
This meant simply that he imagined himself living a recluse’s lifestyle.
In Zhao’s painting, and descriptions of Gu’s paintings, which didn’t survive, the image of a recluse living amongst the hills is clear.
Autumn Colours on the Qiao and Hua Mountains (1296)
Mounted Official (1296)
Zhao often drew horses. Mounted Official (人骑图) contains an inscription that reads:
From my youth, I loved painting horses. I have recently seen scrolls by Han Gan. I’m beginning to understand some of his ideas.
– Zhao Mengfu
Han Gan was a Tang dynasty master. This could be Zhao’s justification for his horse’s lack of accurate proportion. It also shows that the painting fit into Zhao’s scheme of learning from past masters.