the family style: art as lineage

in the ming and qing

craig clunas

Anyone who has looked even cursorily into the pre-twentieth-century

­literature on Chinese calligraphy and painting will have encountered the
phrase zi cheng yijia, “himself formed a jia,” which it is rather too easy to
translate unthinkingly as “formed his own style.”1 In the context of a con-
certed study of “The Family Model in Chinese Art and Culture,” it seems
appropriate to return to this very familiar locution as a starting point for
a preliminary consideration of how the term jia, at once so simple and so
complex, impacts on Ming and early Qing conceptions of transmission
and creation within elite visual practices. This will be done here by ex-
amining something of the broad range of semantic possibilities the term
has in the textual practices by and about members of the family of Wen
Zhengming (1470 – 1559), a Suzhou lineage whose prominence as cul-
tural producers in the period makes it possible to look at a sample of in-
stances of the word jia across time and in different contexts.
It seems significant that, at least as far as the learned compilers of the
phrase dictionary Peiwen yunfu in the early eighteenth century were con-
cerned, the locus classicus of the phrase zi cheng yijia bore upon a visual
practice (as opposed to, say, the practice of poetry, from which by exten-
sion so much of the technical critical vocabulary of calligraphy and paint-
ing is derived). This text, completed under imperial commission in 1711,
cites the biography of Liu Gongquan (778 – 865) from the Old Tang His-
tory (Jiu Tang shu), and states:

Gongquan began by studying the calligraphy of the Wang [Wang

Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi], and subsequently examined the brush

1  For example, Clunas, Elegant Debts, 7. 

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

method of recent times. The style (tishi) of his writing had a mus-
cular loveliness, and he formed his own school (zi cheng yijia).2

This is certainly the standard type of passage in which the phrase ­usually,
and very commonly, appears. Calligrapher or painter A is said to have
studied the work of X, and then looked at the work of Y, and then he
“formed his own school,” or much more literally, “his own family.” This
triangulation of terms looks on occasion startlingly like Hegel’s formula
of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, a way of thinking about things that, along
with the notions of History and progress themselves, are deeply embed-
ded in the discursive practices of the discipline of art history.3
But what does zi cheng yijia signify in the usage of a specific period,
and in particular how much weight should we allow to the use of the
word jia? In Ming and Qing painting sources it is of course seen as a suffix
in the well-known terms lijia and hangjia, denoting respectively the in-
creasingly discursively powerful idea of “amateurs” and “­professionals.”
However, the image of zi cheng yijia is arguably one derived not just from
the discourse of painting, but equally as much from the realm of fam-
ily, property, and the practices that link ancestors to both. The image of
“forming your own jia” is at a basic level one of burying your immediate
ancestors — but on your own terms, and perhaps at a site geographically
remote from the “original” location of the patriline. 4 It is thus simulta-
neously an act of acknowledgment of the past (since the phrase is never
used without a listing of the names and sometimes the achievements of
the masters who have been studied) and one of founding, of superces-
sion, of going beyond. It is also a term with long historical roots. Even if
the Peiwen yunfu compilers are right and the phrase zi cheng yijia is rel-
atively late, the idea of yijia is very much older, hovering in meaning be-
tween “one family” and “one expert.”5 At one and the same time a break
with the past and a transmission of its values, the prevalence of the idea
of “forming his own jia” thus embodies a paradox of “rupturing while
continuing,” perhaps analogous to the “paradox of keeping while giv-
ing” familiar to anthropologists from the study of gift-giving by Annette
Weiner and others.6 It points to some distinctive attitudes to creative and
cultural practices that need to be weighed more carefully by art history
than the unreflective “formed his own school,” derived from an analogy

2  Zhang Yushu, Peiwen yunfu, juan 21:922b. On Liu Gongquan’s style, see Harrist, Fong, et al., Em-
bodied Image, 102.  3 Fernie, Art History and Its Methods, 342 – 43.  4  An image I owe to a stimulating
discussion of the subject with Susan Naquin.  5  Li, “Idea of Authority”; Petersen, “Which Books”;
­Csikszentmihalyi and Nylan, “Constructing Lineages.” I owe these references, and the image of the
indeterminate meaning of yijia, to very helpful communications from Michael Nylan.  6 Weiner,
­Inalienable Possessions. 

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 clunas  art as lineage

[1]

Wang Xizhi (ca. 303 – ca. 361). Ritual to Pray for Good Harvest. Undated Tang dynasty tracing copy,
ca. 618 – 906. Letter mounted as a handscroll; ink on paper, 24.4 × 8.9 cm, entire scroll: 30 × 372 cm.
Princeton University Art Museum, Bequest of John B. Elliott, Class of 1951 (1998 – 140).

with early modern Italian craft practices of training in the professional

workshop, might allow.
Of course, in the most literal sense, there was an understanding
within Chinese writing on calligraphy and painting that cultural skills
might be transmitted within a family context, from one generation to
the next. The key model here might well again be the “Two Wangs,” the
calligrapher Wang Xizhi (ca. 303 – ca. 361) and his son Wang Xianzhi
(344 – 388), with the elder Wang’s nephew Wang Xun (350 – 401) stand-
ing as another example of the way in which talent was part of inheri-
tance (fig. 1). There are plenty of other examples that an educated person [1]
of the Ming and Qing would be likely to know about, from the “Two Lis”
famed as painters in the Tang period — they are Li Sixun (651 – 716) and
Li Zhaodao (­active ca. 670 – 730) — to the father-and-son pairing of Mi
Fu (1051 – 1107) and Mi Youren (1074 – 1151) in the Song dynasty.
There are also many contemporaneous instances of skills and reputa-
tions being transmitted from father to son in the stigmatized (but still sig-
nificant) world of luxury craft production, such as in the case of the Zhu
family of bamboo carvers, studied in detail by Ji Ruoxin.7 Professional
painters, like the three generations of those surnamed Qiu or You who

7  Ji, “Cong Jiading Zhu shi lun.” 

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

descended from Qiu Ying (ca. 1495 – ca. 1552), provide another instance.

These cases provided a pattern on which the practices and statements sur-
rounding the Wen family could be assembled, both by themselves and by
others. A modern volume from the Palace Museum, Beijing, dealing with
painters of the “Wu School,” includes, in addition to Wen Zhengming
himself, seven individuals active down to the late seventeenth century
who were descended from him, and whose practice of painting is linked
with his in some way.8 A closer scrutiny of the Ming and Qing sources on
these and other figures less well remembered today is one way of thinking
about the role of the family in transmission of what are (pace the t­ heory)
technical skills. The interest in doing so here lies not in whether or not an
individual actually based his or her style on a particular predecessor, but
in what it meant to say that he or she did.
One of the earliest of such sources is the Record of the Painters of Su-
zhou (Wujun danqing zhi), with preface dated 1563, by Wang Zhideng
(1535 – 1612). In it, he provides a biography of Wen Zhengming himself,
whose poetic style Wang was said to continue, and adds a note on two of
the most prominent inheritors of his fame as a painter, his second son Wen
[2] Jia (1501 – 1583) (fig. 2) and his nephew Wen Boren (1502 – 1575). They
are said simply to have “inherited his brilliance” (si qi miao).9 Almost a
hundred years later, a text of the very early Qing entitled the History of
Soundless Poetry (Wusheng shi shi), by Jiang Shaoshu (1573 – 1638), deals
with a larger number of Wen family members. Wen Jia is simply identi-
fied as the second son of the great Wen Zhengming, but of Wen Boren
the text says:

He was the nephew of Hengshan [i.e., of Wen Zhengming]. In

painting landscapes, his reputation was not beneath that of
Hengshan… . Boren, when young, transmitted the family schol-
arship (jiaxue), but in time through clever inventions went be-
yond it, and his large-scale landscapes enjoyed somewhat of the
reputation of surpassing their origins [chu lan, literally “going
beyond the blue”].10

This text also has an entry for Wen Peng (1498 – 1573), Wen Zhengming’s
eldest son, of whom it says, “In calligraphy, he followed in the footsteps
of Hengshan, particularly exerting himself in ancient clerical script.” It
goes on to mentions a particular specific work of his, Avoiding the Heat

8  Gugong bowuyuan, Mingdai Wumen huihua. Those included are Wen Boren, Wen Peng, Wen
Jia, Wen Congjian, Wen Zhenheng, Wen Shu, and Wen Nan.  9 Wang, Wujun danqing zhi, juan 1:3.
This and the subsequent texts discussed are catalogued in detail in Lovell, Annotated Bibliography. 
10  Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:28 – 29. 

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 clunas  art as lineage

[2]

Wen Jia (1501 – 1583). Landscapes, 1575. Two leaves from an album of eight leaves; ink and light
color on paper, each painting 25 × 30.0 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Wen C. Fong,
Class of 1951 and Graduate School Class of 1958, and Constance Tang Fong (y1978–44a, c).

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

[3]

Wen Congjian (1574 – 1648). Conversation, 1618. Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper, 98 × 
47 cm. Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Wen C. Fong, Class of 1951 and Graduate School
Class of 1958, and Constance Tang Fong (y1975–34).

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 clunas  art as lineage

in the Shade of the Wutong Tree (Tongyin bishu tu), at the time of writ-
ing in the possession of a certain Mr. Gong of Piling, and says of it, “The
composition is rather like that of Hengshan, as he had a deep understand-
ing of the family scholarship (jiaxue), but the coloring is his own.”11 An-
other Wen family painter recorded here is Wen Congjian (1574 – 1648)
(fig. 3), whose entry reads, in part: [3]

Wen Congjian, zi Yanke, was a descendant in the fourth genera-

tion of Master Hengshan, and had the status of tribute student
but held no office. In sketching landscapes he followed in the
footsteps of Hengshan and Xiucheng [Wen Jia], and upheld [liter­
ally “did not let fall”] the family scholarship (bu zhui jiaxue). 12

It then mentions his now arguably more famous daughter, Wen Shu
(1595 – 1634) (fig. 4), who furthermore has an entry of her own later on [4]
in the text under the category of women artists, where she is described
as “a granddaughter [recte great-great-granddaughter] of Master Heng-
shan, her father was Congjian,” but where no comment seeking to estab-
lish a linkage of her style to any of her male relatives is made.13 The final
Wen family member to be mentioned in the History of Soundless Poetry
is Wen Congchang (1551 – 1616). It reads, in total:

Wen Congchang, zi Wuyue, was a descendant of Master Heng-

shan. In painting landscapes, he had the gist of Hengshan’s
manner, and his use of the brush was elegant and pretty, some-
where in between Zhao Qianli [Zhao Boju (died ca. 1162)] and
Wang Shuming [Wang Meng (ca. 1308 – 1385)]. Although he was
broadly of the family of Wenshui [Wen Jia] and Wufeng [Wen
Boren], he could not go far beyond them.14

Most of these artists are also mentioned in a slightly later text (after 1677),
the Record of Ming Painting (Ming hua lu) by Xu Qin (active ca. 1677).
Wen Peng is simply identified as the eldest son of Wen Zhengming, with-
out any comment on his style.15 As to the second son, Wen Jia, it puts his

11 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:28.  12 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:29.  13 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi,
juan 5:85.  14 Jiang, Wusheng shi shi, juan 2:29 (complete entry, the last sentence conjectural). The
text says yun reng, and in dictionary terms reng means “seventh generation,” but this is seven gen-
erations from the family founder, Wen Hui (1399 – 1448). Yet the form of his name clearly puts him
in the same generation as Wen Congjian, who was four generations from Wen Zhengming. In fact,
Wen Congchang is well documented as the son of Wen Yuanzhi (ca. 1525 – ca. 1585), son in turn of
Wen Boren. See Wen, Wenshi zupu, juan 1:7b, under “Lishi sheng pei zuzang zhi.” This discrepancy
highlights the gaps between “family” sources and those focused on the discourse of “painting.” 
15 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 7:95. 

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

fame as a poet ahead of his painting, though it praises the latter for at-
taining the excellence of Ni Zan (1301 – 1374), and says that in some ways
he “directly competes with his father.”16 Of Wen Boren, this writer states,
“In the landscapes that he did, the force of the brush is elegant and strong,
and he was able to transmit the family manner (neng chuan jiafa),” and
he concludes that some of his large-scale landscapes “are not inferior
to Hengshan.”17 This text introduces a figure not previously mentioned,
[5] Wen Zhenheng (1585 – 1645) (fig. 5), telling us he was a “great-grandson
of Hengshan,” but making no other family linkages.18
The final text to list a number of Wen family artists that will be ex-
amined here is the Continued Record of an Epitome of the Painting of the
Reigning Dynasty (Guochao huazheng xulu), dating from some point
in the middle of the eighteenth century. This deals collectively with a
group of Wen artists, but begins with Wen Congjian, described as “the
great grandson of the Expectant Official” [i.e., Wen Zhengming], who
“transmitted his family manner with slight changes” (chuan qi jiafa er
shao bian). Then we are given an entry for Wen Congjian’s son Wen Nan
(1596 – 1667) and for Wen Shan (active mid-17th cen.). The former is said
to “be totally endowed with the ancestral manner in painting landscapes”
(hua shanshui yibing zufa), but the description of the latter is not linked
at all to other Wen artists, and nor is that of their kinsman, the equally
shadowy Wen Ding (active mid-17th cen.).19 Finally, there is an entry on
the most distinguished woman artist of the Wen tradition, Wen Shu. Like
a number of other sources in which she is mentioned, the writer links her
to her marital family, the very distinguished Wuxing Zhao, 20 and not to
her natal family, the Wen of Suzhou.21 But in discussing very briefly the
painting of Wen Shu’s own daughter Zhao Zhao (active early 17th cen.),
the author says that “she was equally good at orchids and bamboos, and
no disgrace to the family learning” (jiaxue).22
This term jiaxue, “family learning” or “family scholarship,” seen
employed several times in the discussion of Wen family artists above,
could thus clearly stand in early to mid-Qing usage for a visual as well
as a textual tradition, and indeed it is seen in the sources rather more

16 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 3:40.  17 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 3:40.  18 Xu, Ming hua lu, juan 5:61.  19 Zhang
Geng, Guochao huazheng xulu, juan 1:84. The preface of Guochao huazheng lu is dated Qianlong 4
(1739), so Xulu must be later than this. The former, earlier text contains an account of a certain Wen
Dian, “a distant descendant of Hengshan,” and also a descendant of Wen Zhenmeng, whose father
was named Wen Bing. We are told he was impoverished, and sold paintings for a living, but there is
no mention of family style. The point of the entry seems to be an anecdote in which the Kangxi em-
peror asks an unnamed descendant of his about him. Guochao huazheng xulu, juan 1:17 – 18.  20 See
Ankeney Weitz’s essay in this volume for a discussion of the Wuxing Zhao.  21  For example, Feng,
Tuhui baojian xuzuan, juan 3:73; and Tang, Yutai huashi, juan 3:29.  22  Zhang Geng, Guochao huazheng
xulu, juan 2:114. 

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 clunas  art as lineage

[4]

Wen Shu (1595 – 1634). Carnations and Garden Rock, 1627. Folding fan; ink and color on gold paper,
16.5 × 54.0 cm. The Honolulu Academy of Arts, Gift of Mr. Robert Allerton (1957, 2306.1).

frequently than the cognate “family manner” (jiafa). It may well be the
case that there are relatively few images of the family in elite Ming and
Qing art, in the narrow sense of pictures showing different generations
and genders together like the family portraits of contemporary Europe
(though they are common enough in woodblock-printed illustrations in
books). But any idea that jia had no place in Ming and Qing elite visual
culture is not sustainable; it is simply that it is through “manner” (what
art history would call “style”) and not through iconography that it is im-
aged, and through the idea of jiaxue or jiafa that it is discussed.
The evidence base at the moment may be quite small, and it would be
risky to build too much on it, but it is at the very least intriguing to think
about some of the implications of this, in the light of the work Susan
Mann has done on the notion of “family scholarship” in the long eigh-
teenth century, the precise period when these texts were written. She has
demonstrated the importance of this concept in the Qing social imagi-
nary, as something that both conceptually and actually was transmitted
through a mother; “Before and after marriage, in fact, talented women
formed part of a genealogy of learning (“family learning” or jia xue) that
visibly displayed the erudition of their parents and invoked the honor of
their ancestors.”23 One very famous pictorial rendering of this idea is the
well-known birthday painting done in 1638 for his learned aunt by Chen
Hongshou (1598 – 1652), entitled Lady Xuanwenjun Giving Instruction
in the Classics and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, a work that has
been analyzed as an image of female cultural transmission in dark times
in a study by Anne Burkus-Chasson.24 If, as seems legitimate, the concept

23 Mann, Precious Records, 206.  24  Burkus-Chasson, “Elegant or Common?” 

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

[5]

Wen Zhenheng (1585 – 1645). Painting Inspired by Xuanweng’s Poem, 1644. Handscroll; ink and
color on paper, 25.0 × 44.0 cm. Courtesy of Grace Wu Bruce.

of jiaxue is broadened to include the pictorial as well as the textual, and if

we factor in the hitherto disregarded role of women in “transmitting” it,
we may shed an intriguing light on the patriarch of the Wen “family” of
[6] artists, Wen Zhengming himself (fig. 6). It is now appropriate to return
to him, moving back in time from the milieu of the high Qing to that of
the end of the fifteenth century, when he was a young man and one only
just beginning to make a reputation for himself.
The earliest source devoted to the biographies of painters that con-
tains an entry for Wen Zhengming is the 1519 continuation by Han Ang
(active ca. 1519) of the Yuan-period text the Precious Mirror of Painting
(Tuhui baojian) by Xia Wenyan (active ca. 1365). This continuation con-
tains 114 biographies of Ming painters down to the date of publication, a
year in which Wen Zhengming was entering middle age by our standards,
but was still without office. The brief entry, translated in its entirety, says:

Wen Zhengming. A man of Suzhou. His sketches of bamboo

achieve the excellence of Xia Chang [1388 – 1470]. His land-
scapes are superior to those of Shen Zhou [1427 – 1509]. Active
as a poet and writer of prose, excellent at calligraphy. Praised in
Wu and Yue.25

In a recent study of the successive biographies of Wen found in Ming and

early Qing texts, the present author has attempted to demonstrate that

25 Han, Tuhui baojian, 168; Clunas, Elegant Debts, 28. 

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 clunas  art as lineage

[6]

Wen Zhengming (1470 – 1559). Flowers, Landscapes, and Poems, 1558. One leaf from an album of
eleven leaves mounted as handscroll; ink on paper, each leaf 30.9 × 52.8 cm. Princeton University
Art Museum, Gift of David L. Elliott (y1975–33).

the further they get from his own day the grander the models he is sup-
posed to have taken (and transcended) for his own art.26 But in this ear-
liest text it seems likely we are being told something particularly impor-
tant about the way contemporaries saw him, and by extension about the
way he may have seen himself, before the full measure of his subsequent
fame was established.
Of the figures named as models by Han Ang, Shen Zhou was known
as Wen’s own tutor in painting, and the linkage between them has been
correspondingly firm and enduring since their own day. With Xia Chang
this is perhaps less true, perhaps partly because Xia is associated both
textually and in surviving objects overwhelmingly with bamboo painting,
which formed only a part of Wen Zhengming’s much admired total oeuvre.
He is a respected name, but not a major figure, in the canon of Ming
painting. The same is even truer, and is admitted as such by the text, of his
elder brother Xia Bing (b. before 1370, active ca. 1403 – 24), who never­
theless features as the subject of the very first colophon to be preserved in
the “official” collected works of Wen Zhengming, Futian ji, compiled at
or just after the very end of his life by his son Wen Jia. This reads:

Inscription on a painting by Xia Mengyang: To the right is Pic-

ture of Cloudy Mountains (Yunshan tu), done by Xia ­Mengyang

26 Clunas, Elegant Debts, 168. 

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

of Kunshan. Mengyang’s personal name was Bing, he was the

elder brother of the Chief Minister of the Court of Imperial
sacrifices Zhongzhao [Xia Chang]. A capable calligrapher, in
painting he took as his master Gao Fangshan [Gao Kegong
(1248 – 1310)].
Initially he was not renowned, although in the closing years
of Hongwu he served as Assistant Magistrate of Yongning, but
was banished to Yunnan. In Yongle yiwei [1415], Zhongzhao
entered the cohort of Secretariat Drafters with the rank of jin-
shi, to exercise his calligraphy. One day, the Emperor visited
him at work, and personally inspected and admired Zhong-
zhao’s writing. Zhongzhao bowed in thanks, and stated that his
elder brother Bing was also a capable calligrapher. He was sum-
moned and tested for his suitability to receive the imperial com-
mands, and he received the office of Secretariat Drafter together
with Zhongzhao, so that they were known as Drafter Major and
Drafter Minor. They subsequently retired, and ended their days
at home.
He produced only a few calligraphies and paintings in his
lifetime, so that the world knows only the ink bamboos of the
Chief Minister [Xia Chang], and knows nothing of Mengyang.
I have seen in earlier years a Western Inscription written by him,
which had something of the regular script manner. This scroll
belongs to Wang Shibao [Wang Yin, 1464 – 1499], and was in
truth not easy to obtain.27

The prominence given in Wen Zhengming’s collected works to this rela-

tively minor figure, Xia Bing, is easily explained by the fact that both he
and his better-known brother Xia Chang were blood relatives of Wen’s
wife, Mme Wu; her mother, Mme Xia, was Xia Chang’s daughter and
hence Xia Bing’s niece.28
There was thus a sense in which, through the transmission of women
from the Xia to the Wu to the Wen patriline, the “family learning” was
transmitted too. It would be foolish to suggest anything so far-fetched
as that Wen Zhengming learned to paint from his mother-in-law, but at

27 Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji, 1:517.  28 This is made explicit in the funerary inscription for Wen
Zhengming’s father-in-law, Wu Yu (1443 – 1526), in Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji, 1:699. An egregious
mistake in Clunas, Elegant Debts, 29, erroneously states that Mme Xia was the sister of Xia Chang
and Xia Bing; she was in fact the daughter of the former. For a family tree of the Suzhou Wen, see
Sawada, “Mindai Soshū Bun-shi no inseki.” Wang Yin, the scroll’s owner, was married to another
granddaughter of Xia Chang; he was Wen Zhengming’s brother-in-law, and also associated him-
self with the painting of bamboos. Clunas, Elegant Debts, 28. 

470
 clunas  art as lineage

[7]

Zhu Yunming (1461 – 1527). “Stele for the Filial Daughter Cao E ” and “Prose Poem on the Nymph of
the Luo River,” 1507. Two leaves from an album of thirteen leaves; ink on paper, each 17.1 × 10.6 cm.
Prince­ton University Art Museum, Bequest of John B. Elliott (1998 – 117)

the very least it seems likely that the Ming sources are much more aware,
and by implication even more open, than we have been regarding the im-
portance of women in this realm of culture, and of marriage as well as in-
heritance as a way in which cultural capital moved about. In an undated
colophon on a work of the calligrapher Zhu Yunming (1461 – 1527), Wen
himself writes, “The praised calligraphers of the previous generation in
my region were Master Xu, Earl of Wugong [Xu Youzhen (1407 – 1472)
and Master Li, Vice-Minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud [Li Ying-
zhen (1431 – 1493)].” He goes on to tell us explicitly that “Zhu Yunming
(fig. 7) was the maternal grandson (waisun) of the Earl of Wugong [i.e., [7]
the son of his daughter], and the son-in-law of the Vice-Minister,” and
that he studied clerical script with his father-in-law while his drafting
script style came from his grandfather; “he combined the beauty of these
two patriarchs (literally “two fathers,” er fu), yet formed his own line (zi
cheng yijia).”29 Here the association of zi cheng yijia, the moment of rup-
ture and founding, with the inheritance from forebears, an inheritance
which in both these cases is made possible only through the women of
the family, is very striking, and gets us closer to the Ming thinking about
these matters than the language of “schools” and “styles” possibly can.

29 Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji, 2:1375. 

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 part iv  the family as site and symbol of artistic production

It furthermore seems highly likely that Wen Zhengming’s under-

standing of jia in this context has been inflected by his awareness of the
jia as locus of collective ownership in the case of valuable cultural prop-
erties. He never writes, “I own” such-and-such a work, but on the con-
trary always talks about “family ownership,” jiacang, of a Thousand-
Character Classic in Two Script Forms by Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322),
of a version of the same text by the monk Huaisu (ca. 736 – ca. 799), and
of other valuable and significant calligraphic masterpieces the Wen pos-
sessed.30 He certainly lived in a context in which awareness of the learn-
ing of women was explicit. In 1529 he faced the presumably sad duty of
writing the funerary text for his father’s sister Wen Yuqing (1449 – 1528),
an aunt he treated with such affection that, he says, when he saw her in
later life “it was like seeing my late father.” In this deeply personal text he
is careful to note, “The Lady when young received her scholarship in the
family (shouxue jiating), being conversant with the Classic of Filial Piety,
Analects, Mencius as well as other books of minor studies; she could re-
cite them in full.”31 Instruction within the home was the only option for a
Ming elite female, but the point being made here is not simply that Wen
Yuqing had an excellent education; it was excellent precisely because it
was a family education.
No Ming source so far identified supports the assertion, in a mod-
ern reference book, that Shen Zhou described Wen Zhengming’s mother
Qi Shenning (d. 1477) as “the Guan Daosheng of the present age,” asso-
ciating her with the most prominently recorded of women painters, who
lived from 1262 to 1319, and who was the wife of Zhao Mengfu.32 Wen
Zhengming himself was a small child when his mother died, so there
was little opportunity for direct transmission of any pictorial jiaxue she
may have possessed, and in any case her merchant forebears have left no
name for themselves as practitioners (whether they were, like their now
much-studied contemporary, the merchant Wang Zhen [d. 1495], the
owners of artworks is another question).33 It may be legitimate to wonder
if there is not some echo here of the Ming awareness of the role of women,
much like that accorded to the shadowy Lady Wei (Wei furen, 272 – 349),
teacher of Wang Xizhi, greatest of all calligraphers.34
Wen Zhengming lived at a time when issues of the family, its compo-
sition, its boundaries, and its proper regulation (including proper regu-
lation of gender hierarchies) were becoming particularly intense. He was
at least on one occasion involved in the practices surrounding such issues
himself, like the creation of new and more formal written g­ enealogies,
30 For examples, see Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji, 1:524; 2:1351, 1372.  31 Zhou, Wen Zhengming ji,
1:700.  32 Clunas, Elegant Debts, 29.  33  Liscomb, “Collection of Painting and Calligraphy.”  34 On
Lady Wei, see Weidner, Laing, and Lo, Views from Jade Terrace, 18. 

472
 clunas  art as lineage

and the greater importance accorded to the “clan” (shizu) of all those
sharing the same surname.35 To understand precisely what he meant
when he used that hoary phrase zi cheng yijia will require us to range
widely and imaginatively beyond what we think we know about the rele-
vant art historical issues, to take in a whole range of other problems that
touch on some of the most complex, most ephemeral, but at the same
time most powerful discourses bearing on the lives of Chinese women
and men in the Ming and Qing periods.

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