Bamboo

Artist’s inscription:The thunder stops, the rain ceasesThe sun in the west appearsA field of refreshed bamboo is seen against the canvas of the skyNew bamboo casts shadows on the paper windowI pick up my brush and paint this in ink.One of the best known of the so-called Yangzhou Eccentrics, Zheng Xie, also known as Zheng Banqiao, was born into a poverty-stricken literati family in Xinghua, near Yangzhou. Due to his financial situation, he delayed his completion of the civil service examinations until he finally became a jinshi in 1736. By the time he received his first government post, he was already fifty years old. Later he retired to his hometown of Xinghua and frequented the city of Yangzhou, where he kept company with many artists, including his good friend Li Shan (see no. 33).Zheng’s approach to painting and calligraphy seamlessly integrates both the methodical and nonconformist. He limited himself to specialized subject matter, mainly bamboo, orchids, and rocks, for their close connection to calligraphy and associations with scholarly Confucian virtue. Here, he has painted two stalks of bamboo and the shadows they cast on the paper window, referring to a traditional method for learning to paint bamboo. Bold lines of calligraphy echo the upright stature of the bamboo and are done in Zheng’s unique, invented style, which he termed liu-fen-pan, that innovatively blended Han dynasty clerical script with standard, running, and cursive scripts.