I encountered the work of obscure eighteenth-century landscape artist Yuan Yao after meandering through many virtual museums and looking at hundreds of different artworks. What struck me about this artist's work is that it seems to incorporate many elements of Buddhism, arriving at a final state of nirvana: tranquility, perspective, proportion, transcendence. The specific work of his that I chose is a landscape of Kunming Lake from around 1740. It is typical of his work in that Yao's landscapes come from areas along the coast of the Yellow Sea, scenes of classic Chinese landscape elements--water, trees, and islands--near where he was born in Yangzhou.
"Album of Figures, Landscape and Architecture: Leaf D, Kunming Lake", Phoenix Art Museum
Not much is known about his life or even when he was born, but I was able to find a few things. He was the nephew and student of Yuan Jang, who served at the imperial palace during the Yongzheng era so that it's likely that Yao served at the palace as well. The video below gives an overview of the tradition of Chinese landscape paintings and mentions Jang and shows one of his works (CUNY, 4:00-4:50) and also refers to the use of water and trees as an important part of the landscape paintings regarding the ancient but still useful aspect of both (CUNY, 2:40-3:35).
CUNY TV, "Chinese Landscape Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum II"
Yao is obscure enough that it was difficult to find any articles mentioning him in the JSTOR database, but I did find one article that refers to one of Yao's paintings. In "The Image of Change: From the I Ching to the Evolution of Chaos" author Yuting Zao "introduces other (chaotic) types of change to sparsely fill the gap between the basic I Ching orders and the ultimate Change, allowing artistic speculation regarding the evolution of many types of change." (Zao, introduction) Zao considers Yao's work, which he illustrates with Yao's Penglai Island, which is discussed in depth here: Magical Destination, Historianshut.com According to Zao, Penglai "reflects a reclusive mental state at the end of imperial China, when [the island] is on the verge of being engulfed by the roaring sea." (Zao, 261) However, I disagree with Zao's theory. Penglai ties in with Yao's depiction that I chose of Kunming Lake. The lake itself was designed to represent the traditional Chinese gardening practice of "one pond, three hills" which were intended to represent three islands of the immortals mentioned in the Classic of Mountains and Seas: Penglai, Yingzhou, and Fangzhang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming_Lake
Instead Yao imagines the mystical along with the order and serenity and transcendence of nirvana that is a common theme throughout his works.
My impression is that Yao was devoted to illustrating landscapes to call forth the greater good, to bring a sense of comfort and tranquility that comes from calming the elements, in reaching nirvana. We can see this in all of his works that give us the order and wisdom of nature, the serenity and symmetry of Buddhist temples, and in other works illustrated here:
"Album of Figures, Landscape and Architecture: Leaf B, Return Under the Moonlight", Phoenix Art Museum
Here we have the classic illustration of trees and water as referenced in the CUNY video above.
"Album of Figures, Landscape and Architecture: Leaf E, Embarkation on Early Morn", Phoenix Art Museum
Here we see human striving in the midst of the recurring common themes of foliage and water.
"Album of Figures, Landscape and Architecture: Leaf G, Pleasure Boat in Misty Waves", Phoenix Art Museum
And finally the work above illustrating full transcendence of the elements...
In Penglai, Zao sees something entirely different to serve his theory of chaos even though this is not manifest in the painting itself: "Before a thunderstorm, swelling tides surge up the island to form violent collisions with the shore. The pines in the foreground are almost uprooted by the relentless wind" yet he finally concedes "while the pink plum blossoms in the mid-ground shed a gleam of hope." (Zao, 261) Yet the common thread in Yao's work is not only one of hope but also one of reaching a culmination of wisdom, order, peace, tranquility, nirvana. This is reinforced by his being at the imperial palace to give a sense of these things to comfort and bring a sense of greater good. We can further see this in a collection of Yao's work at Harvard Art Museums, where every one of his works illustrated bring us the calm of nature and order and well-being: https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/person/29496?person=29496
Works Cited
CUNY TV. Chinese Landscape Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum II. youtube.com, Accessed 10 May 2022
Thehistorianshut.com website, https://thehistorianshut.com/2020/07/01/the-island-of-penglai-painted-by-yuan-yao-c-18th-century/, Accessed 10 May 2022
Wikipedia.com website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Yao, Accessed 10 May 2022
Zao, Yuting. "The Image of Change: From the I Ching to the Evolution of Chaos" Leonardo, Vol. 48., No. 3. [The MIT Press] 2015, pp. 257-263, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43832996.
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