Landscape

Considered one the Four Masters of Xin’an, Zha Shibiao was born into a wealthy family of art collectors and connoisseurs in Anhui province. By his mid-twenties he had achieved a successful career in the civil service. However, like many scholars loyal to the Ming, after its fall in 1644 he abandoned his official career and turned to the brush to earn a living. Eventually, he styled himself the “inkstone-ploughing guest,” a reference to his new livelihood of writing and painting.

In his early paintings, Zha became quite skilled at the dry, feathery brushwork of the Yuan painter Ni Zan, a sparse, sometimes austere fourteenth-century style. Late in life, Zha turned to the “wet brush” techniques of Song dynasty painters like Gao Kegong. The white and black contrast between ink and paper in this style offered a wider variation of atmospheric effects that casts an intense, brooding mood over the scenery. The inscription reads:

The eighth month of summer in the renzhen year of the Kangxi reign [1692], this was painted at Daying lou [Great Goose Pavilion].