18세기 揚州 소금상인과 庭園圖 — 東園圖와 休園圖를 중심으로 —

Abstract

This dissertation examines the commission, production, and painterly expressions of The East Garden and The Garden of Repose by professional painters Yuan Jiang and Wang Yun during the Kangxi era. These two works are apt illustrations of the state of early Qing garden painting and the Yangzhou art establishment prior to the emergence of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou(also known as the Yangzhou School of Painting). The two works also permit a more nuanced understanding of the cultural and artistic activities under taken by Shanxi and Huizhou salt merchants in Yangzhou. The East Garden and The Garden of Repose respectively follow the traditions of the panorama and the compartmentalized view, but both are marked by a realistic approach to representation in their utilization of precise lines and refined colors. Yuan Jiang, while faithfully rendering the topographic character of the East Garden by broadly presenting the garden’s surrounding landscape and geographic information, also emphasized the extensive space of the garden by meticulously depicting details of the over all layout and individual elements within. Wang Yun, by contrast, chose only the best views where architecture and landscape could be seen in perfect harmony and painted them as twelve scenes of different seasons and times. Wang also incorporated into his work an element of portraiture from the genre of leisure scenes then in vogue and imbued each human figure with a portrait-like quality. What commands special attention in the circumstance of The East Garden’s production is that Qiao Guozhen, who commissioned the painting, later sent it to Wang Shizhen and Song Luo, both former officials of Yangzhou, to receive commemorative inscriptions. This clearly shows how the painting, are presentation of an actual garden, served to invite remarks by government official and elevated the reputation of the place in the process. Furthermore, the portrait-like aspect of The Garden of Repose, commissioned by Zheng Yuheng, and the efforts of his son, Zheng Qinghu, to collect various autographs, inscriptions, and paintings and strategically merge them into the work call for an interpretation of The Garden of Repose as a pictorial embodiment of the Zheng clan’s stature, exemplified by the garden. The East Garden and The Garden of Repose also tell us much about the taste of Shanxi and Huizhou salt merchants in the realm of painting. Huizhou merchants and literati-officials who dominated Yangzhou’s cultural scene during the Kangxi era ordinarily favored Anhui School painters and Shitao, but the fact that the Zheng clan of Changling, which represented the Huizhou salt merchants’ community, commissioned Wang Yun to produce a work shows that their taste in painting was in fact very broad. Moreover, Yuan Jiang enjoyed direct connections with Shanxi salt merchants during his time in Yangzhou, before he began his activities in Shanxi; it suggests that the style of professional painters such as Yuan Jiang was in favor among Shanxi salt merchants of this time. Together with the patronage of Yuan Yao by the Shanxi salt merchant He Junzhao, and that of Hua Yan by the Shaanxi salt merchant Yuan Guotang, the case of Qiao Guozheng’s commissioning of The East Garden is significant in highlighting previously overlooked cultural and artistic pursuits of salt merchants from the broader Shanxi and Shaanxi region.