The Subject:     The true s

The Artist:     Attributedeveryday life. 1

The Work:       Old Lai-tzu is an illustibly a penjing. 

The Artist:        Chao 95). 2

The Work:     The Reclining Pine depicts a flaa?

The Artist:     Li Shixin68). 3

The Work:     Gathering in the Apricot Garden (c.1437) is an inkree. 

The Subject:      The three Yangs wretaries.

The Artist:     Xie Tin T'ing-hsun]. 4

The Work:     An unidentified picten to the number of trees shown? 5

The Work:     Facing forwdes.

The Artist:     Wang Wei (1495-1508). 6

The Work:     The Jin Gu (Golden Valley) Garden of Shi Chong  [Chin-ku, Shih Ch'ung] (first half 16th cent.).  Two large potted t three feet.

The Subject:     An imaginaf luxurious living.

The Artist:     Qiu Ying [Ch'iu Ying, c. 1510-1551], bornrt! 7

The Work:     Early Spring in a Palace Garden during the Han period (Han Gong Qun Xiao Tu [Han Kung Ch'un Hsiao T'u]).  Two separateroll right of the pentsai is the visual balance to the rockery. 

The Subject:      This long scroo require. 

The Artist:     Attributed to Qiu Ying also. 8

The Work:     In an untitled pthing pool. 

The Author:     Also ascribed to Qiu, but executed later. 9

The Work:     An unattributed work (1637) depicrocks which are slightly taller than the narrow-leaved plants around them. 

1.    Wu, Yee-Sun  Man Lung Artistic Pot Plants (Hong Kong: Wing-Lung Bank Ltd; 1974, Second edition), pg. 30, with b&w photo; Sullivan, Michael  The Arts of China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1984, Third Edition), pg. 159; Fitzgerald, C.P.  China, A Short Cultural History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1985), pg. 299.

2.      Fairbank, John K., Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig:  East Asia, Tradition & Transformation  (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; 1989.  Revised Edition), pg. 45.  An 1873 Shanghai woodblock print is also shown on this page illustrating the same story.  In its lower right corner there are two tall containers, with triangular petals along the bottom and drum-nails along the top.  These pots hold flowering plants, somewhat stylized, with thin trunks/stems.  Compared to other portrayals of that era, there is no justification in terming the plants here as pentsai.

3.    Wu, pg. 32.  Pertaining to the early existence of wire in China, the twelfth-century writer Dong Yu [Tung Yu] said of the greatest Tang writer and possibly greatest master of painting in the history of the Far East: "Wu Daozi [Wu Tao-tzu, born c. A.D. 700]'s figures remind me of sculpture.  One can see them sideways and all around.  His linework consists of minute curves like rolled copper wire; however thickly his red or white paint is laid on, the structure of the forms and modelling of the flesh are never obscured." per Sullivan, pg. 125; Fitzgerald, pg. 447; the string theory, per conversation with Fred Carpenter at the Phoenix Bonsai Society, 12/15/92.

4.    Smith, Bradley and Wan-go Weng  China: A History in Art (A Gemini Smith Inc., Book published by Doubleday & Company; 1979), pg. 213, location given as Wan-go H.C. Weng, New York.

5.    Wu,  pg. 39.

6.    Stein, Rolf A. The World in Miniature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1990), pg. 32.

7.    Keswick, Maggie Chinese Garden: History, Art & Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.; 1978), pg. 74, location given as Chion-in, Kyoto; Sullivan, pp. 209, 236-237; Sirén, Osvald Gardens of China (New York: The Ronald Press Company; 1949), Plate 82; Wu, pg. 33, who lists the artist as Chao Ying.

8.    Siren, pp. 80-81, Plates 92-95, with enlargement of center of Plate 94, Rockery and dwarf trees on low table, which is also in Thacker, Christopher The History of Gardens (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1979), pg. 54 as fig. 29.  Siren states that the painting belongs to C.T. Loo & Co., New York.  Photocopies of the Plates can be combined to form a mini-scroll 12 cm. tall by 156.3 cm long to give a better appreciation of the original scroll.

9.    Third section of three in Plate 90 of Siren, from a private collection in Stockholm.

10.   Wood, Frances A Companion to China (New York: St. Martin's Press; 1988), b&w line drawing, pg. 147; translation by Michelle Chang of Taipei while as a student at ASU, Tempe, AZ, c.1995.