Bada Shanren
The eccentric prince.
Bada Shanren was a descendant of the Ming emperors and became a monk after the dynasty fell. His fish and birds with angry eyes are interpreted as protest.
Bada Shanren was born in 1626 in Nanchang in Jiangxi province with the name Zhu Da. He was a descendant of the founder of the Ming dynasty and belonged to a branch of the imperial family. He received a scholarly upbringing and showed an early talent for painting and poetry. When the Ming dynasty fell in 1644 and the Manchu Qing rulers took over, his ancestry became mortally dangerous.
To survive he became a Buddhist monk in 1648 and lived in the monastery for many years. Around 1680 he went through a severe crisis. According to the sources he behaved as if mad, laughing and weeping, and wrote the character for “mute” on his door. It is unclear whether this was genuine illness, grief or a strategy. He then left monastic life and lived as a painter in Nanchang. He began using the name Bada Shanren, roughly “Mountain Man of the Eight Expanses”, around 1684. His signature is written so that it can be read as the characters for both crying and laughing.
Bada Shanren painted mainly birds, fish, lotus flowers, rocks and simple landscapes. The pictures consist of a few assured brushstrokes and large empty areas. The animals are strange: birds balancing on one leg, fish that seem to float in the air, and often eyes staring upwards or sideways with an angry or contemptuous look. Many have interpreted the pictures as silent protest against Qing rule, but that is an interpretation.
His style was unusually free and personal, and he is counted among the great Individualists of the early Qing. He strongly influenced later painters, including the Eccentrics of Yangzhou in the 18th century and modern masters such as Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian. Today there is a museum dedicated to him in Nanchang.