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Painter: Ma Yuan (馬遠, c.1160-1225), Song Dynasty (960-1279)
Physical appearance: Album leaf, ink and color on silk, 27.4 x 43.1 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei
About: Emperor Ningzong's poem inscribed in the upper right corner reads, "The wild flowers dance when brushed by my sleeves. Reclusive birds make no sound as they shun the presence of people (觸袖野花多自舞，避人幽鳥不成啼)."
The calligraphy is direct yet beautifully elegant. In the lower left is the signature of Ma Yuan, a court painter in the reigns of Emperors Guangzong (r. 1190-1194) and Ningzong (r. 1195-1224). These lines of poetry describe the stillness and tranquility of wild flowers, only to be disturbed by the intrusion of a lofty scholar taking a walk, a golden oriole responding by taking off in flight. The painting fuses lyrical meanings as stillness and activity intersect at this moment. As the bird takes flight, the branches of the weeping willow seem to blow in the breeze at the same time. A child attendant carries a wrapped zither proceeding to the middle of the painting while the lofty scholar seems to have stopped in mid-step to ponder the beauty of Nature. He twists his beard as if composing a verse, his view extending into the misty distance of the great void. The direction of the bird in flight and the movement of the willow branches naturally take the viewer's eyes to the imperial inscription and the poetic intent behind it.
"The wildflowers dance when brushed by my sleeves. Reclusive birds make no sound as they shun the presence of people."
A considerable number of Chinese paintings include poetry. There's always a question in such works as to whether the poem or the painting came first. Which one inspired the other? In either case, the poem obviously focuses our attention on the relationship between man and the natural world. Both the man and the birds in Ma Yuan's painting are looking off to the upper right - perhaps they are all focusing on the calligraphy!
Who is the man? His gauze hat and fine clothing indicate he is a man of some stature, quite possibly a scholar. In some Southern Song paintings, a white-robed figure dressed as a scholar could be the Emperor himself. In that case, the painting becomes a celebration of the Emperor's ability to remain close to nature in the midst of his responsibilities. Whoever the man is, he seems to find pleasure in lonely, out-of-the-way spots. The other human figure at the lower left might represent the intelligence, the cultivated nature, of the robed man, who apparently has the means to travel with his own personal attendant/musician.
There's an interesting contrast, even irony, to be found in the fact that a scholar, well-dressed and apparently of some refinement, looks at a scene from nature in quite a different way than, say, a farmer who had to toil in it every day. It is, in some respects, an artificial scene that we're witnessing in Ma Yuan's work.
Yet it is also a graceful and elegant painting that balances observational detail and mystery. As James Cahill puts it in his book Chinese Painting, "Ma Yuan envelops his subject in an aura of feeling with an extreme economy of means, relying upon the emotional associations of his images and the evocative power of the emptiness surrounding them."
