Master of Plum Blossom: Persona and Art

I received an album as a gift from master Fu Meiying in the middle of January, 2008 when the first snow hit Jiangxi Province. The album is a collection of his paintings of ink-wash plum blossoms. Some of them have been exhibited at home and abroad and some are now in the collections of several domestic and foreign museums.

A preeminent painter of plum blossoms, Li carries on a tradition of painting plum blossoms in black ink, which dates back to the Northern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Plum blossoms became a literary image in the years of the Northern Song Dynasty when Lin Hejing and Su Dongpo wrote poems in praise of the color, shape and fragrance of the flowers blooming in the depth of winter. Plum blossoms thus became a symbol of noble spirit and fortitude. In the Song (960-1279) and the Yuan (1127-1279), artists began to take up plum flowers as a serious theme. Wang Mian (1287-1359), a poet and painter of the Yuan Dynasty, is famed for painting plum blossoms in ink. The ink style has been going strong over the past 700 years. Wang Mian is equally famed for the poems he inscribed on his paintings, expressing his belief in a pure and simple life kept away from the blind chasing of fame and fortune. He practiced exactly what he expressed in his painting and poetry. He declined government nominations and offers and lived in Zhuji, Zhejiang as a reclusive painter living on the proceeds of selling his paintings.

The eighty-year-old Fu Meiying might just be one of numerous Chinese artists who have contributed to the prosperity of the ancient tradition by painting ink-wash plum blossoms, but he is an excellent one. The album stands for his artistic preeminence in 125 paintings, 48 poems and 20 calligraphic inscriptions, all about the plum blossom and the noble spirit and persona the flower embodies. Mei began to study painting under the influence of his father. Seeing the kid had an inspirational touch for painting plum blossoms, the tutor gave him an artist name Meiying, meaning the reflections of plum blossom. The plum blossom the master has been painting over decades truthfully echoes his spirit and describes the vicissitudes he has experienced in his lifetime. He is plum blossoms he paints and his plum blossoms define his personality, poetry, and art. And Fu Meiying is a local cultural celebrity in Jiujiang, a river town on the Yangtze. The lyrics of a song he wrote in the 1980s for the city of Jiujiang can still be heard today across the city.

(The writer of this story is editor-in-chief of Jiujiang Daily of Jiangxi Province.)