Zhao Mengfu: Calligraphy and Painting for Khubilai’s China by Shane McCausland (review)

As the first Western-language biography of Zhao Mengfu 趙孟頫 (1254–1322)—a member of the Song imperial clan, a Hanlin academician, and “pivotal figure in the history of Chinese art” (p. 1)—Shane McCausland’s Zhao Mengfu: Calligraphy and Painting for Khubilai’s China is a substantial addition to the field of Chinese art history in the West. Elegantly written and profusely illustrated, the work stands as an excellent example of art historical scholarship, one which succeeds in placing Zhao’s works into the specific historical context of their production and allows for a richer understanding of his impact on the pictorial arts of East Asia from the thirteenth century to the present. Through a detailed analysis of four different genres within Zhao’s oeuvre: calligraphy, figural painting (animals and humans), landscapes, and “old trees, bamboos, and rocks,” McCausland documents changes in artistic style that reflect changes in Zhao’s attitude about the past, about politics, and about his place in society. Finally, McCausland argues that the artistic works of Zhao Mengfu reveal a gradual return to Northern Song models, the result of, and potentially facilitating, a “new sense of unity and community” in Chinese literati culture—one which “reached its culmination in the mid-1310s” with the reestablishment of the civil-service exams (p. 265).

As readers of this journal likely already know, Zhao Mengfu was a highly controversial figure, even in his own day. In spite of his Song imperial ancestry, he made the choice to accept a position in the court of the Mongol conquerors of the Southern Song. We learn of his decision in Chapter 1, which consists of a biographical overview through calligraphy. Focusing on individual elements of his (primarily artistic) identity, this chapter begins with a discussion of Zhao’s changing interests in different calligraphy styles, his early life in the family home of Wuxing 吳興 (present-day Huzhou 湖州), the names by which he was known, his place in local cultural geography as one of the so-called “Eight Talents of Wuxing,” and even his appearance. The rest of the chapter is dedicated to a detailed analysis of Zhao’s calligraphy and his influence on the development of the addition of “critical colophons” to works of historic art as a means of documenting and evaluating them. This topical overview is helpfully supplemented by two appendices: a translation of his official biography in the Yuanshi and a “Select Chronology” of the major dates in his life. For those less familiar with Zhao as an individual, the appendices are crucial for understanding Zhao’s primary importance as an official and advisor to Khubilai Khan. Indeed, the Yuanshi account addresses this directly: “The late Yang Zai 楊載 of the History Office described Mengfu’s talent as having been hidden by calligraphy and painting: those who knew his calligraphy and painting did not know of his literature, and those who knew of his literature did not know of his study of economics” (p. 346, paraphrased also on p. 1). He was clearly an individual about whom people have always needed to know more.

Chapter 2 moves on to a discussion of Zhao Mengfu’s paintings of horses and human figures. Two main themes are proposed in this chapter. McCausland affirms our understanding that Zhao, following the critical framework of evaluating human talent in the manner of evaluating fine horses, repurposes figural paintings to be “an art about the self” (p. 116) and that “paintings were an effective means by which the scholar-official could discuss humanist themes” (p. 270). But, at the same time, a second theme regarding the significance Zhao imparts to the works of the brush in the context of Mongol rule also emerges. Citing one of Zhao’s eulogies on Li Gonglin’s 李公麟 Five Tribute Horses (ca. 1089–1090), we learn of his contention that “the brush arts were the most monumental, the most imperishable form of Chinese culture,” more likely to...