Chinese Flowering Plum Motif
The image of the flowering plum has been played a popular role throughout Chinese paintings and poetry. What was the significance of the flowering plum motif during the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279)?
The period of the Song dynasty (960-1279) was particularly noted for its artistic achievements. Although landscape paintings of the Northern Song (960-1127) was predominant during this period, flower painting became equally as important during the Southern Song (1127-1279) where artists tended to focus on a single blossom or flowering branch. A popular and favorite motif used countless times throughout poetry and paintings alike was the flowering plum. Throughout Chinese history the flowering plum, known as mei or mei hua, has served as an inspiration to Chinese poets and painters alike. However, before the Song dynasty the flowering plum served only as a pictorial motif existing through written records such as “illustrations of narrative poems” and “Buddhist texts.” It wasn’t until the twelfth century where few documents reveal “figure paintings with flowering plums” which appeared during the Song dynasty- “the formative period of plum-blossom appreciation” (Bickford 45). By the twelfth century artists and poets alike used the flowering plum in their artworks because the subject of flowers in general brought a “synaesthetic appeal to the senses of sight, smell, and touch” that “offered Chinese poets and painters subjects of most unlimited symbolic and metaphorical potential” (Harrist 53). The Pre-sung literature reveals that there were poems about plum blossoms, while in the Song there is plum poetry and plum paintings; the plum was seen as an independent subject that it was generalized in a category of its own. Symbolically the plum blossom “denotes courage and hope because it is the first to brave the frosts of winter” (Burling 350). Flowering before all others in the Chinese New Year, when all else is either withered, dead, or in slumber,
The period of the Song dynasty (960-1279) was particularly noted for its artistic achievements. Although landscape paintings of the Northern Song (960-1127) was predominant during this period, flower painting became equally as important during the Southern Song (1127-1279) where artists tended to focus on a single blossom or flowering branch. A popular and favorite motif used countless times throughout poetry and paintings alike was the flowering plum. Throughout Chinese history the flowering plum, known as mei or mei hua, has served as an inspiration to Chinese poets and painters alike. However, before the Song dynasty the flowering plum served only as a pictorial motif existing through written records such as “illustrations of narrative poems” and “Buddhist texts.” It wasn’t until the twelfth century where few documents reveal “figure paintings with flowering plums” which appeared during the Song dynasty- “the formative period of plum-blossom appreciation” (Bickford 45). By the twelfth century artists and poets alike used the flowering plum in their artworks because the subject of flowers in general brought a “synaesthetic appeal to the senses of sight, smell, and touch” that “offered Chinese poets and painters subjects of most unlimited symbolic and metaphorical potential” (Harrist 53). The Pre-sung literature reveals that there were poems about plum blossoms, while in the Song there is plum poetry and plum paintings; the plum was seen as an independent subject that it was generalized in a category of its own. Symbolically the plum blossom “denotes courage and hope because it is the first to brave the frosts of winter” (Burling 350). Flowering before all others in the Chinese New Year, when all else is either withered, dead, or in slumber,
Bibliography: Bickford, Maggie. Bones of Jade, Soul of Ice. New Haven: Yale Univ. Art Gallery, 1985. Burling, Judith & Arthur. Chinese Art. New York: Viking Press, 1953. Jr., Harrist E. Robert. Ch’ien Hsuan’s ‘Pear Blossoms: The Tradition of Flower Painting And Poetry from Sung to Yuan. “Metropolitan Museum Journal.” 22 (1987): 53-70. JSTOR. 29 May 2007 .