Qiu Ying's other patrons.

• Author: Laing, Ellen Johnston
• Position: 16th-century painter

The Suzhou painter Qiu Ying (ca. 1494ca. 1552), known today as one of the Four Great Masters of the Ming dynasty, depended upon commissions from patrons for his livelihood. Earlier research has already identified his three "sustaining" patrons, in whose homes Qiu lived and worked as a painter-in-residence: the little-known Chen Guan (d. after 1557), the collector Zhou Fenglai (1523-55) who lived in Kunshan, and the well-known Xiang Yuanbian (1525-90) who resided in Jiaxing.(1)

New research has unveiled the fact that Chen Guan was not associated exclusively with Qiu Ying, but also had dealings with another Suzhou painter, Xie Shichen (1487-after 1567). Chen not only commissioned Xie to paint The Elegant Gathering in the Ming Garden (dated 1557), but also owned an album of landscapes by Xie.(2) Recent research has also revealed a host of people who requested Qiu Ying to create paintings for them. Many of these individuals were his clients on a one-time basis. In some instances, these one-time customers were not among those favored with notice in contemporary records; often, even if these people can be identified, there may be little information preserved about them. Sometimes, however, successive generations of a well-known family supported Qiu Ying by commissioning occasional pieces. Throughout his career, Qiu Ying constantly received requests from these lesser customers, even while, it would seem, living in the home of a major patron. Thus, Qiu Ying had three tiers of patrons: the one-time customer, the loyal but intermittent supporter, and the "sustaining" patron.

This paper presents Qiu's newly discovered one-time and intermittent patrons and the paintings (mostly lost today) he produced at their behest. The one-time customer and the loyal supporter are important because they illuminate the range of Qiu's reputation among knowledgeable inhabitants of the area, expand our knowledge of his patronage circles, and provide an indication of how a particular artist responded artistically to certain requests for paintings, and thus in an oblique way reveal something about Qiu Ying's daily concerns.

For these and other clients, Qiu Ying produced both independent compositions and copies of ancient masterpieces. He was also engaged to create presentation paintings for birthdays and other occasions. These were among the program pictures, the "designer" paintings which, as defined by Anne Clapp, were expected, for the most part, to be different and inventive, novel and witty, all the while staying within the parameters of acceptability.(3) Those commemorating an individual's pseudonym (hao), for example, were required to play off the meaning of the new name. These program scrolls usually were horizontal scrolls and the paintings were bolstered by a title, written in large characters, at the beginning, and by some sort of essay at the end, perhaps followed by a series of shorter statements or poems by the individual's friends. The recipient obtained a fine collection of calligraphy, poetry, and painting in a single package.(4)

Qiu Ying's birthday pictures usually avoided the banal celebratory subjects conveying obvious wishes for longevity, such as pine trees (a popular symbol of long life), or the God of Longevity. Instead, he might depict a landscape to mark such occasions. For example, as a birthday gift for Xu Jin (1479-1545), an Assistant Minister of Personnel who married the daughter of the Grand Secretary Wang Ao (1450-1524),(5) Qiu Ying created a colored landscape titled Immortal's Mountains among the Lakes, with the alternate name of Spring Colors on Dongting, presumably referring to the mountains of Lake Tai named East and West Dongting.(6) Another birthday presentation picture by Qiu was a monochrome landscape and figure scene made for a Mr. Shao.(7)

Qiu Ying created his share of hao paintings, including one for "Jade Field," a scroll (now lost) for Wang Laibin (1509-after 1550), a famous Suzhou physician, whose sobriquet was Yutian (Jade Field).(8) The Wu family of Yixing, located across Lake Tai from Suzhou also requested hao paintings of Qiu Ying. One of these was Cangqi, the hao of Wu Chou. Little is known of Wu Chou except that he was a brother of the famous official, Wu Yan (1457-1519), and that he became a recorder in the household administration of the heir-apparent.(9) He retired to live on the banks of the Cang, hence his alternate name. The painting was created on the occasion of his newly constructed Hidden Dwelling House (Youju wu). In heavy blue-and-green on silk, the picture showed people enjoying tea inside a thatched hut under pines, cypresses, and willows in a mountain setting; a boat on the lake ferried guests to the new building, some pausing to appreciate the peach blossoms in the willow shade.(10) As required, the scroll was provided with title and supplementary colophons by famous people. In this case, Xu Chu, a Suzhou calligrapher noted for his hand in seal-script who was in demand to write titles for paintings, did the title, and Wen Zhengming (1470-1559), Wen Peng (1497-1573), Wen Jia (1501-83), Zhang Bu and Zhou Tianqiu (1514-95), all Suzhou notables, were among the contributors of colophons. The second hao painting for a member of the Wu family from Yixing was made for Wu Xian (h. Hanyun).(11) Aside from the note that it was in the style of the Song painter Zhao Boju, no description of the painting has survived, but it is recorded that Zhou Tianqiu wrote out a fu for it, that Shen Shixing, along with another writer, supplied poems, and Zhang Wei (jinshi 1568) provided a biography of Wu. The inscriptions were not copied out and so have disappeared along with the painting. Whether Wu Xian belonged to the same illustrious family as Wu Chou remains to be determined.

In addition to birthday and hao pictures, Qiu was requested to make unique depictions for special events. One of these was for presentation to a certain Yin Zhuzhuang who hailed from Yongxin in Jiangxi province. He came to Suzhou in 1515 to teach, and because he was especially fond of the qin, Xu Chu requested Qiu Ying in 1532 to depict A Scholar Holding a Qin as a gift for Yin. Xi Kang's (223-262 A.D.) famous fu on the qin was inscribed at the end of the scroll.(12)

Qiu's superb baimiao rendering of an official and a servant pulling a recalcitrant donkey (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.) was created to commemorate the subscription list of contributors to a fund to purchase a donkey for the scholar Zhu Cunli (1444-1513).(13) In this instance, the painting was not for presentation to Zhu, but was commissioned by a collector who owned the calligraphic text of the subscription list.

Like other painters, Qiu Ying illustrated poems. Some of these were illustrations to collections of poems by different authors, brought together into a handscroll, as in Spring in the South, a landscape showing travelers on horseback by a riverside with multi-storied villas and mansions, made for Yuan Zhi (1502-47), to accompany poems written on the theme by contemporary luminaries, such as Wang Chong (1494-1533), Wen...