Courtesy Name: Dao Fu
Pseudonym : Baiyang Shanren loosely translated to ‘The Scholar/ Mountain Man of White Light’ Purity and Yang Energy
Qingteng and Baiyang
Xu Wei and Chen Chun were known together as their titles. They were known for their skills in the sketching style of birds and flowers and were highly appreciated for their work.
Born 1483 Suzhou passed 1544.
Chen Chun was born into a wealthy family of scholar-officials in Suzhou. He learned calligraphy from Wen Zhengming and further continued to express a more free and demure form of ink wash painting. He studied in Wu School under the guidance of Shen Zhou and learned literati painting. He mainly painted landscapes in his time and was also recognised as a bird and flower painter,
Chen Chun explored a similar ‘boneless’ structure of painting like Shen Zhou. Accommodated with the Wu School’s idea of technical versatility and his natural style of paintings. His way of artistry was often depicted as romantic.
Summer Garden (Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper)
A simple yet beautiful piece. It captures a bunch of summer plants like the lotus, and what looks like azaleas. Chen Chun captures the beauty of the summer bloom with this painting with the blossoming of different flowers. The use of different brush strokes, gentle and refined to draw the different plants. A calm and soft shaping for the lotus plants but a defined one for the azaleas from the branch and its intertwining roots. This organics and natural form he has painted, with the harsher winding points defined with a darker ink stroke while the calmer and gentler line with a lighter washed ink.
The lotus flower in Chinese culture symbolizes the heart and mind's ultimate purity because it rises untainted and beautiful from the mud.
While the azaleas are often a symbol of womanhood and temperance.
Chen Chun may have painted it in the midst of the love and passion of the summer season. The blossoming of something new and fresh. The azalea plants blossom at their different stages, budding. Maybe a budding love? It would be romantic to think that way.
Another way, referring to some of the more legible characters on the upper right side. He talks about sorrow and something along the lines of making a connection as a person. Alluding to this idea, it would be the emergence of something from sorrow and having a pure connection.
It may not seem like a complicated piece, but there may be many alluding meanings behind what Chen Chun was wanting to convey.
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