Kingfisher Over a Lotus Pond

Ren Yi (also known by his sobriquet Bonian) was born in Shangyin (modern Shaoxing), Zhejiang province. The son of a portrait painter, Ren Yi learned to paint at a young age and in adulthood used his art as his livelihood. After living for a time in Ningbo and Suzhou, Ren finally settled in the newly developed port city of Shanghai in 1868. From his base in bustling Shanghai, Ren Yi developed a new and novel style of painting that won him a wide audience and made him the acknowledged leader of the Shanghai school, or Haipai. Though it favors light colors, Ren's style is at once bold, forceful, and vivid, as exemplified by this delightful bird-and-flower painting. Depicting a small bird with outstretched wings darting through the attenuated stems of lotus growing in a pond, this painting adopts a perspective that brings the viewer down to the water's surface, virtually eye-to-eye with the tiny creature. The broad, blue-green lotus leaves and lush white blossoms appear enormous as they loom above the bird, while a thick forest of lotus stems nearly camouflages it altogether. Faint brush strokes representing water reeds and grasses delineate the pond's surface, which would otherwise appear as a void. The lotus is an important motif in Chinese art that traces its symbolic origins to Buddhism. Because it grows in muddy waters, yet emerges upright, unsullied, fragrant, and beautiful, the lotus became an emblem of purity in Buddhist literature and imagery. The two Chinese terms for lotus--lian and he--are phonetically identical to numerous auspicious phrases, such as love and harmony, and are thus ubiquitous in Chinese folk art and rebuses.