Newsletter: Winter 2003

Flowers in a Crystal Vase [is] a rare, exceptionally large Chinese painting of flowering peony,red camellia, and plum sprays in a bluish crystal vase set against a blank silk background. The colored flowers are combinedwith delicate branches and verdant leaves, and the details of the cut stems are visible inside the translucent vase positioned near the bottom edgeof the painting. This arrangement indicates that the painting may have been hung infront of a family altar table as a substitute for an actual flower centerpiece. There are examples of ancestor paintings and religious wall paintings that show similar arrangements of peonies and camellias placed in the center and sometimes on a table. Flowers in a Crystal Vase is dated stylistically to the fourteenth century,and belongs to a tradition of decorative bird-and-flower painting known as the Piling School,after professional painters work­ ing in the region of Piling,the historical name for Changzhou (modern Wujin), in Jiangsu Province....Characteristics of this school include detailed representations of flowers and insects from observation, the use of mineral pigments, and blank or minimal backgrounds. This regional school of painting had a major influence in both China and japan. In China it inspired the meticulous attention to detail in bird-and-flower paintings produced by Southern Song court artists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Later fourteenth-century examples show less refined detail, greater patternization, and a shallower rendering of depth. Examples of Piling School professional painting were not widely collected in China, and many early works survived only in Japan.