| Su Renshan (1814-c.1850), a Cantonese painter active during the pre-Taiping Opium War interlude (1835-1860), represents a new type of artist emerging in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: highly original, ambitious and socially disenfranchised. Also distinctive is the site of his practice---the province of Guangdong, far from the traditional centers of power, where first the Opium War (1839-1842) and later the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) took place, catapulting the country into its modern era. The violence of his time provoked strong reactions from Su Renshan who used his paintings to criticize the government and the intellectual and moral foundations that it claimed for itself. His belligerent candour is believed to have been the reason for his exile and then later his imprisonment, during which is believed to have died at the age of thirty-six.;This dissertation examines four different ways in which Su presents his visual arguments: his pictorial craft, themes of heroes and utopias, his painting's relationship to local Guangdong culture, and his thematization of female sociality. These four different areas not only touch on some of the pressing issues of Su's period, but also demonstrate the range of his creativity and achievement. Throughout, I emphasize the importance of religion, subjectivity and regional identity. Overall, this thematically organized monographic study of Su Renshan is intended to contribute to more focused and fertile discussions of the role of the artist in a rapidly changing Chinese world at the beginning of the difficult encounter with Western imperialism and modernization. |
