Shen Quan (simplified Chinese:沈铨;traditional Chinese:沈銓;pinyin:Shěn Quán;Wade–Giles:Shen Ch'üan; c. 1682–1760) was aChinese painter during theQing dynasty (1644–1912). Hiscourtesy name wasNanpin (南蘋) and hissobriquet wasHengzhai (衡斎). His works became influential inJapaneseEdo period art.
Shen was born inDeqing inZhejiang province.[1] He specialized inbird-and-flower painting, and was influenced byBian Jingzhao andLü Ji. His works were painted in a very realistic style, and he had many students and patrons.
Shen was invited toJapan by a high official. He arrived inNagasaki in the final month of 1731 with two students, acquiring many Japanese students after his arrival. His paintings soon became very popular, and after his 1733 return to China he continued to send paintings back to Japan. Shen had many pupils while in Japan; his most important wasKumashiro Yūhi, who in turn taughtSō Shiseki andKakutei. Other artists influenced by Shen includedKatsushika Hokusai,Maruyama Ōkyo, andGanku.
Shen's paintings were popular for their realistic, colored images of animals and flowers, and three-dimensional trees and rocks.
The painting style of Shen Nanping and his school would therefore be fruit of an artistic investigation. In their paintings, flora and fauna are not just “realistic”, but are styled just as they appear in Chinese and European treatises. Chinese and Western treatises on natural sciences could have played a key role in the spread of knowledge on subjects such as botany, zoology, and mineralogy, and that the images featured in these treatises might have inspired artists to choose and create new representations of bird-and-flower. That is why scholar Meccarelli has called the style of the Shen Nanping school “flora and fauna decorative painting”.[2]
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Media related toShen Quan at Wikimedia Commons
