Constructing a new pantheon of Confucian worthies: Portraits of four Yuan scholars

Abstract

The Portraits of four Yuan scholars, a painting now mounted in handscroll format in the collection of Cincinnati Art Museum, depicts four gentlemen in sequential arrangement. These four men are standing upright and not interacting with each other. A colophon by Su Danian 蘇大年 (1296-1364) dated 1354 identifies these four men as Wu Cheng 吳澄 (1249-1333), Yu Ji 虞集 (1272-1348), Ouyang Xuan 歐陽玄 (1283-1357) and Jie Xisi 揭傒斯 (1274-1344). They were renowned scholars of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) who had served the Mongol government at the capital, Dadu (present-day Beijing). These gentlemen were also keen promoters of Daoxue 道學 (Learning of the Way), a Confucian school of philosophy primarily established in the Song dynasty (960-1279). I argue that certain new formal qualities of this painting announced these four scholars as the successors of Daotong 道統 (Transmission of the Way), the legitimate transmission of the canonical Confucian learning which was affirmed as Daoxue in the Yuan dynasty. Their identity as Daoxue scholars was the primary focus of the portraits when this emerging school of Confucianism as proposed by the Song scholar Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) was promoted by the Yuan court. By examining the Portraits of four Yuan scholars, I demonstrate that a new mode of representation in portraiture was created to articulate such an identity. This painting executed in approximately 1325 was done with ink and colour in different modes of brushwork for the faces and the clothing. The four men were portrayed dressed in outfits and posed in a way consistent with the images and the descriptions of the Confucian worthies preserved in surviving texts. My investigation suggests that the portraits of the four scholars were modelled after the former worthies enshrined in the Confucius temples in the Yuan dynasty. Another new feature of the Portraits of four Yuan scholars is the unprecedentedly strong interest in the depiction of details of the face, a quality that I propose is related to their learning as Daoxue scholars. This paper aims to establish that the concept of Daotong had a significant impact on how these Yuan scholars constructed their portraits.