Tang Yin:The Ming Artist And Antiquity

Tang Yin (1470-1523), born in Suzhou, courtesy name Tang Bohu, was a Chinese scholar, painter, calligrapher, and poet. He is also known as "Four Masters of Ming Dynasty " in Chinese art history, the others include Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming and Qiu Ying. To be a master, one need to study from famous teachers and also to study from numerous antiquities. During his life time, there emerged most well-educated and rich collector-connoisseurs, such as Shen Zhou, Wu Kuan, Shi Jian, Huang Lin, Wang Ao,, Chen Jian, Zhu Cun Li, Wen Zhengming Xu Zhenqing, Wang Chong, Chen Chun and so on. Tang Yin had many opportunities to see or copy these collections.In this article I attempt to find out all the local collections (I refer to paintings and calligraphies) he had seen, and try to analyze his taste as a Connoisseur. The article is divided into four parts. In the first part, I will summarize researches on Tang Yin since his period, and put forward my own arguments. In the second part, I will explore some backgrounds of Tang Yin to choose painter as his career and outline his close friendship with different local collector-connoisseurs, and list all these collections he had seen during these activities. In the third part, I will explore the works of Tang Yin in three profiles to figure out his preference to the styles of old masters. At last, I will give my conclusion.