Early Qing Yangzhou Painting Studies

This dissertation discusses the cultural reconstruction and the economic recovery of Yangzhou in Early Qing, focusing on the composition of the painting circle of Early Qing Yangzhou.At the outset, the status of painting in Yangzhou in Late Ming is analyzed in terms of painting theory and practice, which is followed by a research into the literary development in Early Qing Yangzhou, together with the painting genres and painters, which suggest that with the prosperity of the literary activities, the works of professional painters were widely accepted by the literatis.The Jiehua painters were another group that was important in professional Yangzhou painters. The interaction between the Jiehua painters and the salt merchants from Shanxi is examined from the perspective of painting patronage, whereby reproducing the position of Shanxi merchants in the development of Early Qing Yangzhou painting.Anhui merchants played a more remarkable role in the development of Early Qing Yangzhou painting, and they were inseparably linked to the Xin'an style, popular in Early Qing, and the rise of Shitao.Withing 80 years of Early Qing, the Xin'an School, with strong YiMin (remnant subject) sentiments, replaced the Wu school and Songjiang style, and their ties with the Anhui merchants gave the literati paintings of Yangzhou a worldly and commercial color. In the meantime, the rise of professional painters rendered a literati color to the works of the professionals. Thus the painting of Yangzhou on both ways.Shitao, who replaced the Xin'an painters, and his works, were the result of choice of both the culture and commerce of Yangzhou. He painted like a literati, but had only the status of a professional painter when seeking commissioning, which shows that by Mid-Kangxi years, the painters had fixed connoisseurs, and the consumers tended to select the painters, whose selection is in fact the reason and impetus for a change in the painting style of Yangzhou.The eclectic attitude of Yangzhou painting from the late Ming was a foundation for the co-existence and co-development of various painting styles in Yangzhou. It was with such a stage of diversification, progressive development and co-prosperity that eventually gave birth to the individualistic Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.