Zhāng Hóng 张宏 / 張宏

Zhāng Hóng 张宏 / 張宏 (1577—ca.1652)

Courtesy Name: Jūn Dù 君度

Art Name: Hè Jiàn 鹤涧 / 鶴澗

Zhāng Hóng 张宏 / 張宏 (1577—ca.1652) was born in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Not much is known about his life and career from textual sources. He was a professional artist, active mainly in Suzhou although he traveled a bit, who appears to have been somewhat educated. His oeuvre shows him to have been a very versatile artist who had carefully studied styles of previous Wu School masters including Shěn Zhōu 沈周 (1427—1509) and Wén Zhēngmíng 文征明 / 文徵明 (1470—1559), both of whom were from Suzhou as well. In addition to landscape paintings, which formed the most part of his oeuvre, Zhang was also skilled in painting figures as well as flowers and birds. An active and revered member in the small circle of literati and artists from Wu region, Zhang was known for his depiction of local life and folk sceneries, along with his exclusively realistic landscape paintings which were usually immediate documenting of his travel experiences. Rather than faithfully following the conventions of Chinese landscape painting, his works were more about his own physical experience. Probably one of the earliest Chinese painters receptive to European influences, Zhang was very likely to have seen or studied European landscape prints brought to Suzhou and Nanjing by Jesuit missionaries from Europe in late Ming Dynasty, as some of his works showed his familiarity with western compositional devices. Though considered as one of the most prominent painter of Wu School, Zhang had almost no followers.

Zimeng Xiang

Sources:

Cahill, James. “Chang Hung and the Limits of Representation.” In The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting, 1-35. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Wang, Xin. “Tan Su Zhou Hua Jia Yuan Shang Tong He Zhang Hong谈苏州画家袁尚统和张宏.” Palace Museum Journal 故宫博物院院刊 03 (1911): 27–35. Accessed 2016. doi:10.16319/j.cnki.0452-7402.1991.03.003.