The Artist:      Yan Liben [Yen Li-pen, 600 - 673] was a minister of state and a court painter, in fact, the most celebrated painter of the seventh century in China.  He was the son and brother of two other famous artists, had been a court painter in attendance to the second Tang emperor, Taizong [T'ai-tsung], and rose to the high office of Minister of the Right under the emperor's successor.  His father, Yan Bi, served Northern Zhou and Sui rulers with his expertise in architecture, engineering, and the visual arts.  He also designed weapons, organized imperial processions, and supervised the construction of a section of the Great Wall; such duties apparently exceeding those of a court painter as narrowly defined in later times.  His two sons, Lide (d.656) and Liben, both served in Taizong's court.  As the designers of Tang imperial mausoleums, they were probably responsible for the six famous stone horses in front of Taizong's tomb at Zhaoling, which have survived as the best examples of early Tang relief carving.  Lide was less a painter than an engineer and architect.  Although he made some court portraits, it was other kinds of service -- designing ceremonial costumes, constructing palace buildings, and building bridges and ships for military purposes -- that won him thew title of grand duke.
    Yan Liben's fame, on the other hand, rested mainly on his art, and he achieved even greater glory when he became one of the two prime ministers -- the other was a military officer.  A popular saying satirized this seemingly strange combination: "The Minister on the Left proclaims authority in the desert; the Minister on the Right attains fame through cinnabar and blue."  Why did Taizong, an emperor famous for his ability to select personnel, choose these two men as his chief officials?  Representing wu (military forces) and wen (literature and arts), respectively, they helped the Tang founder create History.  In Yan Liben's case, his works recorded important court events, commemorated key political figures, and illustrated the way of rulership through historical exemplars.  Although his medium was painting, not writing, he was essentially a court historian.
    His portraits are in the presumed Han style, which became the standard style of official court portraiture and the epitome of the Confucian ideal.  He often employed ink and color on silk, but most of his work has long since been lost.  He is reported to have painted emperors, great scholars, strange-looking foreigners, animals, birds, and even popular Buddhist subjects in the same style.  His most famous works are two lost group portraits made at different stages in early Tang history.  Right before ascending the throne in 626, the future emperor Taizong commissioned Yan to portray eighteen eminent scholars.  The work, a mural, was widely publicized, and the inscription accompanying the portraits written by one of the scholars noted the crown prince's intention of attracting public support through this art project.  Twenty-two years later, Yan Liben received an imperial commission to paint a second series of portraits known as The Twenty-Four Meritorious Officials in the Lingyan Palace (Lingyan Ge ershisi gongchen).  Taizong himself wrote the tribtue, asserting the significance of this mural in commemorating the founding of the Tang Empire.  Like the portraits of the eighteen scholars, these portraits of officials have long since vanished.
     It is said that when rudely summoned by Taizong -- whose tomb he was commissioned to design -- to do a picture, the well-known and prolific Yan had to crawl on the ground before the emperor and other officials while he worked.  Bathed in sweat, Yan sketched some ducks that were swimming about on the palace lake in front of the officials.  Returning home after his humiliation, he advised his sons and pupils never to follow his profession. 1

The Work:      Courtiers and Guests (aka "Courtiers and Foreign Envoys," c. 706) is the ink and color on plaster wall mural on the eastern wall in the middle of the passage to the tomb of Zhang Huai at Qianling [Chien Ling].  It vividly reproduces the scene of Tang officials greeting foreign envoys.  In the front are two enthusiastic court officials, and behind them are three foreign envoys.  Research confirms that the first envoy came from the Tujue tribe, an ethnic minority tribe in north-western ancient China.  This mural reflects the active exchange of friendly and diplomatic visits between China and foreign countries during the Tang Dynasty.
     Two of the servants in court attire hold with both hands penjing, artistic pot plants with miniature rockeries and fruit trees.  (There appears to be a non-essential piece of the mural missing between the two, evidence of surface degradation.)  The left-hand servant, male, carries a yellowish oval bowl, perhaps equivalent to nine inches long by an inch deep.  Two, possibly three, small pyramidal stones are in the dish.  The rightmost stone has a touch or two of aqua pigment.  On two of the stones is a small plant with a few frond-like leaves; the left-hand plant is topped with a red flower, the right with a green bud.
     The servant to the right, female, carries a pot in the form of a lotus flower.  This contains a perhaps foot tall thin-stemmed flowering plant or tree with leaves and fruits.  The gesture of these courtiers presenting the gifts suggest that these landscapes were very desirable and occupied honored positions in the mansions of the nobility of the time.

The Subject:      Prince Zhang Huai (posthumous name for Li Xian [Li Hsien], 655-684) was the second son of Empress Wu Zetian (r.690-705) and the sixth son of the third Tang emperor, Gaozong (r.650-683).  Zhang was named heir apparent in 675, but five years later was accused by his mother of plotting a coup and was banished to Sichuan.  There he was later forced to commit suicide.  Following the restoration of Emperor Zhongzong (r.684, 705-710) and the death of the empress in 705, Li Xian's title of Prince Yong was posthumously reinstated and his remains were reinterred as one of the seventeen attendant tombs in the vast double Qianling Mausoleum complex of his father -- and mother -- at Qianxian [Chienhsien] county, Shaanxi province, to the northwest of the capital city of Xian.  In 711, Emperor Ruizong (r.684-690, 710-712) further restored Li Xian's status as heir apparent with the title Crown Prince Zhanghuai.  Later that year, Li Xian's consort, Madame Fang, was buried with him and, although his tomb was not enlarged, the murals were repainted to accord with his more exalted status.
     The tomb, excavated from from July 1971 to February 1972, consists of a walled compound and an earthern pyramid above ground and a tunnel that slopes down about forty-five feet below the surface to a level passageway and two vaulted chambers.  Aligned along a north-south axis, the underground complex measures about 230 feet in length.  The tomb also has four skylights, four passages, six niches, a brick corridor, an ante-chamber and a burial chamber.  The tomb passage is 71 meters long, 3.3 meters wide and 7 meters deep.  Although the tomb was once robbed, over 600 articles were unearthed.  They include various ceramic figurines, tri-colored ceramic figurines, articles for daily use and other burial objects.  There are more than 50 murals in the tomb, which occupy 400 square meters, and remain basically intact.  The murals that decorate the walls are organized to suggest a palace set within a landscape.  The top of the sloping entrance ramp represents a mounted procession and polo players in rural settings.  Farther along the ramp are two scenes of foreign envoys being received by Chinese officials and two contingents of honor guards.  As the ramp descends through three gatelike passageways, the scenery changes to suggest a palatial setting with gatekeepers, racks of spears, and eunuchs.  A wooden door once marked the point where the entranceway levels off.  Beyond this point, the floor is tiled and the murals are given over to images of palace ladies.  The antechamber and burial chamber are decorated to suggest garden courtyards.
     The larger tombs remain unopened, still hiding their treasures.  The murals in the smaller tombs also show chariots, carriages and horses; terraces, battlements and parapets; weapons, flags, banners, canopies and fans; hills, rivers, trees and rocks; birds, flowers and plucked branches; exotic animals and insects.  Using fine brushes to apply colors, the painters varied themes and expressiveness of feeling, creating many realistic images.  The drawing is free and vivacious, sketchy with just a few deft brushstrokes yet perfectly controlled and vivdly describing their three-dimensionality. 
     Each of this pair of paintings shows courtiers in front and "guests" (emissaries) in the rear, reflecting the friendly contacts between nationalities and countries.  Looking solemn, the guests stand on two sides of the passage facing the tomb chamber in conformity with the Tang ceremony of paying respects to the dead, the theme portrayed.  While ancient books mention paintings recording such exchanges, these are the first known pictures of emissaries on a mission of condolence.  At least some the figures are fairly large, approximately three-quarters of life scale.
     On the western wall of the passage to the tomb of Zhang Huai is a twelve meter-long painting, "Playing Polo" which depicts 20 figures on horse back.  With mallets in hand, the five at the head are trying to chase the ball.  The game was introduced from Persia (present-day Iran) and became very popular under the patronage of the Tang royal house.  Polo was Prince Zhang Huai's favorite sport.  All the people of the court, from the emperor to civil and military officials and even women, liked playing polo.  There were polo grounds in most of the imperial palaces and hunting reserves.  Some noblemen had their own polo grounds.  After the Tang Dynasty, polo became popular throughout the country.  It gradually diminished towards the end of the Ming Dynasty. 2

The Work:     Frescoes featuring dwarf potted trees were found near Hebei in the graves of nobles who lived during the Five Dynasties period.  Discovered in 1978, these paintings have images of a variety of red blossoms arranged in floral pentsai.  Six of these are placed on a five-cornered table.  The plants, containers and stand, the three elements of the gardening art's display, result in a work of unsurpassed beauty. 3 
 

1.    Liang, Amy  The Living Art of Bonsai (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.; 1992), pg. 101 in color;

Zhao, Qingquan  Penjing: Worlds of Wonderment (Athens, GA: Venus Communications; 1997), pg. 40, small in color;

Hu, Yunhua  Chinese Penjing (Portland, OR: Timber Press; 1987) pp. 129 -130, has as "Paying Tribute" with a detail of one section;

Yang, Xin et al  Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (New Haven & London: Yale University Press and Beijing: Foreign Languages Press; 1997), pp. 60-61.

Hu, Kemin  Scholars' Rocks in Ancient China: The Suyuan Stone Catalogue (Trunbull, CT: Weatherhill; 2002), Fig. 1 with the alternate title;

Goepper, Roger  The Essence of Chinese Painting (Boston, MA: Boston Book & Art Shop; 1963), pp. 34, 244;

Hucker, Charles O.  China's Imperial Past (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1975), pg. 262;

Sullivan, Michael  The Arts of China(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1984, Third Edition), pp. 128-130;

Fitzgerald, C.P.  China, A Short Cultural History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1985), pg. 368;

Per Sunset Bonsai (Menlo Park, CA: Sunset Publishing Corporation; 1994, Third Edition), pg. 8, "Chinese frescoes dating back sometime before A.D.220 clearly show floral bonsai [sic] -- what we would think of as flower arrangements -- in complementary containers.  Painted during the late Han dynasty, these frescoes were discovered in the 1970's."

2.    Webber, Leonard Bonsai For the Home and Garden (North Ryde, NSW, Australia: Angus & Robertson Publishers; 1985), pg. 1;

Koreshoff, Deborah  Bonsai: Its Art, Science and Philosophy (Brisbane, Australia: Boolarong Publications; 1984), pg. 3;

Stein, Rolf A.  The World in Miniature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; 1990), pg. 40;

Wen, Chin  "Two Underground Galleries of Tang Dynasty Murals" in New Archaeological Finds in China, II (Peking: Foreign Language Press; 1978),  pg. 101;

Wyatt, James C.Y. et al  China, Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press; 2004), pp.302-303.

Hu, Yunhua  pg. 128 with b&w photo;

cf. "Princess Zhang-Huai" in the caption of a different picture in Samson, Isabelle and Rémy Samson  The Creative Art of Bonsai (London: Ward Lock, Ltd.; 1986), pg. 9, and the pg. 8 text which reads: "The first mention of the art of bonsai goes back to the Tsin era (third century BC): on the tomb of Zhang Huai, the second son of the Empress Tang Wu Zetian, there is a figure of a woman carrying a bonsai in both hands.";

both attendants are shown together in one picture on the "Bonsai in Evolution" information board at the Fuku-Bonsai Center, Hawaii, and also on pg. 19 of Giorgi, Gianfranco  Simon & Schuster's Guide to Bonsai (New York: Simon & Schuster; 1990); Liang, pp. 100-101, the latter showing the left servant in color;

Chan, Peter  Bonsai, The Art of Growing and Keeping Miniature Trees (Secaucus, NJ: Wellfleet Press; 1985), pg. 144, has close-up of left servant, possibly retouched;

Zhao, pg. 40 has small in color of left servant with the tray being orange in color;

Lesniewicz, Paul  Bonsai in Your Home (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.; 1994), color of left servant on pp. 3 and 8, taken at a slightly oblique angle;

Wen, pp. 95-98;

Sullivan, pp. 128-130;

Zhongmin, Han and Hubert Delahaye  A Journey Through Ancient China (New York: Gallery Books; 1985), pg. 212;

"Qianling Mausoleum," http://www.chinatravelfactbook.com/chinaattractions/qianling-mausoleum.asp;

Gender identification of servants based on Tang clothing styles courtesy of Dustin Martinez in conversation with RJB Feb. 21, 2002.

3.    Liang, pg. 99.