T'ang Yin

T'ang Yin
Secluded Fishermen on an Autumn River
Inscription by a friend dated 1523
Section of a handscroll
Ink and colors on silk (h. 11-1/2 inches)
Palace Museum Collection, Taichung

"His beginnings were brilliant; he took first place twice in provincial examinations, the first time when he was only fifteen years old. Su-chou scholarly society befriended and supported him, and at the age of twenty-eight he set off for the capital with high hopes, to take the state examination that was the entrance to a career as a government official. Again he passed in first place; but it was later disclosed that a playboy friend had bribed the servant of the examiner to get advance information of the essay subjects; T'ang Yin was involved in the ensuing scandal, and degraded. Finding himself thus barred from the standard vocation of the literatus, and, unlike Wen Cheng-ming and others, too poor to live in elegant retirement on private means, he settled into an in-between existence, selling paintings when he needed money, forgetting the bitterness of his disgrace in the taverns and pleasure quarters of Su-chou one day, transcending it through Ch'an Buddhism meditation the next. Throughout all this he kept the friendship of that paragon of virtue Wen Cheng-ming, who admonished him in vain for his profligacy."

James Cahill, Chinese Painting (Geneva: Albert Skira, 1960)