Zheng Weipei (active 1930s), Four Egrets on a Branch
Zheng Weipei, born in Yangzhou at the beginning of the XVIIIe century, is known today only for works produced in Japan, where he followed in 1731 Shen Quan (Shen Nanpin, around 1682-after 1760), who established a school in the archipelago by the introduction of a style of painting both naturalistic and decorative.
However, while Shen Nanpin distributed, during his two years spent in Japan, models developed in China, Zheng Weipei incorporated into his works many codes from his new artistic environment, as demonstrated by the composition of this scroll, based on an oblique, and the background covered with a light wash on which the aigrettes stand out in reserve. This game of negative delimitation of forms allows the artist to underline them with an empty border which gives them more presence and, in the case of the tree branch, underlines their relief and volume. The treatment of the birds and the leaves of the tree, by its original character, testifies to the new vocabulary produced by the hybridization of Chinese and Japanese styles. The subject of the painting, the immaculate purity of these four crests indifferent to jealousies, is explained by a quotation from the Chinese poet Xiao Yingshi (707-758).
Cartel:
Zheng Weipei (active 1930s) Four egrets on a branch, 1730s
ink on silk
111,6x49 inch
CM 2016-53
Gift of the Society of Friends of the Cernuschi Museum, 2016
Photo credit :
© Paris Museums / Cernuschi Museum
