The Admonitions Scroll: Ideals of Etiquette, Art and Empire from Early China

By Shane McCausland

Masterpiece is a commonplace word nowadays, but there is nothing common about the handscroll Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies (Nushi zhen tu) in the British Museum, which has been called a 'divine omen from antiquity' and even likened, for its equanimity and aura of mystery, to the Sphinx (Kohara, p. 50). Painted ostensibly in a classical mode of narrative illustration, the scroll has nine scenes. All but one, a landscape, show model empresses and imperial concubines at the courts of ancient China. The painting contains an array of images, from one in which a concubine has publicly distanced herself from the emperor (see Fig. 4) to one that represents a wife's mistrust of her husband in the intimacy of the bedchamber (Fig. 1). But they come together as a group to transmit pivotal gestures in the lives of some of the ancient rulers of China.

Scene 9: the instructress writing down her admonitions'Thus has the instructress, charged with the duty of admonition, thought good to speak to the ladies of the palace harem.'

In terms of both design and execution, the painting has a genial quality in its own right, and since at least the eleventh century, has been revered as the work of the early master Gu Kaizhi (c. 345-c. 406). Although today it is regarded as a sixth to eighth century copy of an original painting by Gu, it is virtually unique in having passed through art collections from mediaeval times to the present.

Understanding quite how the Admonitions scroll has been able to cast a spell over the viewer even to the present day is a relevant and intriguing topic, and thinking hard about it should be instructive, not just about the art of the past, but also about our whole attitude to the patrimony of the past.

It is toward just such inquiry that the colloquy and exhibition project to be held in London in the middle of this month is geared. 'Colloquies on Art and Archaeology in Asia', the long-running series of international conferences organized by the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, comes of age with the 21st of the series, entitled 'The Admonitions Scroll: Ideals of Etiquette, Art and Empire from Early China'. In conjunction with the conference, the British Museum will exhibit the scroll and other highlights of figure painting from their collection, including the controversial Nymph of the Luo River (Luoshen tu), a handscroll also attributed to Gu Kaizhi, and the Odes of Chen (Chen feng) handscroll by the Southern Song court painter Ma Hezhi (act. 1131-62).

This month's conference coincides with the Admonitions scroll's first public exhibition since 1987, but we must look back to the mid-1960s for the last concerted research on it. In 1966, the British Museum published its third series of replicas since acquiring it in 1903 (Gray, 1966; see also Binyon, 1912 and Fukui, 1925). The following year saw Kohara Hironobu's enterprising book-length study in Kokka, for which all students of the Admonitions scroll are greatly indebted to him ('Joshi shin zukan', parts 1 and 2, in Kokka 908, November 1967, pp. 17-31 and 909, December 1967, pp. 13-27). Kohara revised and updated his work last year, and this was translated into English in preparation for the colloquy (Kohara, 2000). After more than a quarter of a century, and at the start of a new millennium, this project now presents an exciting opportunity for all students of art to reconsider the significance of the Admonitions scroll and the field of Chinese art history that it is widely seen to represent.The colloquy is organized into three main themes: etiquette, art and empire. The painting is a monoscenic narrative illustration of a didactic text about ideal behaviour or etiquette at court in ancient China, hence the need to explore its classical format and rhetoric. Its attribution to the satirical but brilliant Gu Kaizhi places it at the inception of the history of painting, hence the need to recognize it as a fledgling work of art, a second broad theme. Finally, the seals and colophons of emperors, courtiers and prominent collectors over the last ten or fifteen centuries urge us to consider the reception of the painting in the contexts of ruling and rulership, particularly its use and abuse at court - hence the third theme, empire. This essay aims to outline the themes of the colloquy and identify some of the discursive issues to be explored.

Ideals of etiquette, or rules of conduct, were at the heart of the Confucian tradition that became state ideology in early imperial China during the Han dynasty (206 BCE-CE 220). Exemplary and cautionary tales designed to be edifying or morally uplifting were presented in narrative illustration in words and images. Although gradually displaced in the centuries after the Han as other genres took hold, this narrative mode recurred in much later didactic art; for example, in phases of dynastic regeneration like the early Southern Song (1127-1279) and its northern rival, the Jin (1115-1234), where there was a pressing need to repossess the past for purposes of legitimation.

In art history, the Admonitions scroll is positioned on the cusp of this transition from the didacticism of the classical era to the artistic expression of the more flamboyant Six Dynasties (317-589). Although we commonly think of it as a painting and a work of art, the Admonitions scroll is of course a monoscenic didactic narrative about models of thought and action. It illustrates the eponymous text composed in 292 by the courtier and poet Zhang Hua (232-300). Zhang's ten 'admonitions' were framed, not unconventionally, within a text preface and a concluding 'autobiographical' scene; the text of each episode was inscribed to the right of its illustration.

In the concluding scene in the Admonitions painting (actually the ninth, because of the early loss of the first two episodes), the instructress is seen graciously writing down her admonitions for the benefit of the court ladies (Fig. 2). A willowy figure, she holds in her hands a scroll and a brush - an allusion to the 'Meek Girl' ('Jingnu') ode from the 'Odes of Pei' ('Pei feng') in the Confucian classic, the Shijing (Book of Odes). There, one of the women of the imperial harem is selected to police the behaviour of her fellow inmates. Her task was to tick them off about their shortcomings using a 'red tube' or 'reed' (tong guan). In the classical era, didactic rhetoric could scarcely be taken at face value, and was often ironic, satirical or allegorical. This ode, for instance, was a jibe at the lack of virtue of the then ruler's consort.

By analogy, therefore, Zhang Hua's Admonitions text of 292 could be read as a satire on the character and conduct of the notorious dominatrix, Empress Jia (d. 300), consort of the ruler of the Western Jin dynasty (265-317). Delivered in the voice of a court instructress, Zhang's critique got its bite from the black-comic distance between the empress's ruthless cunning and the model virtues of the rulers' consorts in his selection of 'admonitions'.

The first four (two lost and two extant) of these represented actual historical heroines. (The first two scenes had already been lost by the early twelfth century, which is the approximate date of a complete ink-monochrome version of the Admonitions scroll in the Palace Museum, Beijing; see Yu Hui's essay in this issue.) The dramatic first scene of the British Museum scroll (the third admonition of the text), for instance, shows the stoical Lady Feng Wan, who had placed herself between an attacking bear and her husband, the Han emperor Yuandi (r. 49-33 BCE), being saved by his bodyguard (Fig. 3).

Assuming the original Admonitions painting was by Gu Kaizhi, it was done about a century after the Admonitions text of 292. This time-lag is evident from the later, that is, Eastern Jin (317-420) high fashion seen in it. The court ladies are dressed in magnificent winged tiaras and tasselled dresses with long trains. In this flamboyant era, etiquette was considered stuffy, and anyone holding to old-fashioned Confucian values could expect to be teased mercilessly by non-conformist members of the elite like Gu Kaizhi. The sophisticated depiction of the Admonitions women, rendered in 'gossamer' lineament with consummate skill, equally evokes their beauty, character and charisma. Indeed, knowing that Gu Kaizhi's ideal in painting was to 'use form to describe spirit' (yi xing xie shen; Zhang, juan 5, p. 71) strengthens the case for his authorship.

In part, these images draw upon the ancient idea that beauty mirrors virtue (a link that Audrey Spiro will discuss at the colloquy). For a later artist like Gu Kaizhi, however, the ironic contrast of the virtuous beauties with the Empress Jia, who was said to be short, dark and ugly - the epitome of a woman without virtue - seems gratuitous. But this may be the point, since Gu would become famous for mixing the burlesque with the sublime. Anecdotes about him suggest he could not resist an opportunity for ribald play. One records that to win over a woman he was attracted to, he painted her picture on a wall and put a pin through the heart. Amazingly, 'she then told him of her heartache, so he removed the pin, whereupon the affair ended happily' (ibid., juan 5, pp. 67-68). On this evidence, any discourse on proper behaviour in the Admonitions painting should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Even so, since it could be read as a Confucian narrative about correct behaviour, and as a work of artistic self-expression, the scroll's meaning has been historically both complex and unstable. To make a sweeping generalization, its value as a 'transmission of the spirit' (chuan shen) or 'transformation' (bian) has been more significant to the learned elite, while its value as an 'omen from antiquity' or dynastic treasure that preserved ancient ideals of conduct has been a priority for the imperial collector.

Classical rhetoric about the role of women at court provides the format and subject of the painting, but seeing how it is manipulated and redirected is also a tool for recovering the creativity and self-expression of early art in the Six Dynasties period. The figure of the instructress is an intriguing example. Her critical 'red tube' has been understood as a flute (Waley, p. 33) and an elegant container (Legge, vol. 4, 1871, part 1, book III, Ode XVII, pp. 68-69), but was also traditionally thought of as a writing brush (Kohara, pp. 9-10). Zhang Hua presumably borrowed this notion in assuming the voice of the instructress to write his text. In what may be a telling conceit, by painting this subject the artist seems to claim the same critical or satirical power for his own brush.

The Admonitions painter appears to have had little or no vested interest in the success of the images as genuine admonitions, as Kohara observed (ibid., p. 13). The concern in these scenes does not seem to be how right or wrong the actions of the characters are, but their histrionic relationships. This can be seen in the forlorn look Emperor Chengdi (r. 33-7 BCE) gives Lady Ban (see Fig. 4), the brinkmanship of the bedchamber (see Fig. 1), the rejection of the 'wife who knew herself to be beautiful' (see Fig. 8) and so on. These intrigues are more indicative of a fixation with bravado in human relationships than with representing virtue per se.A comparison of Scene 2 with the same image on a lacquer screen found in the tomb of Sima Jinlong (d. 484) and his wife suggests how run-of-the-mill compositions associated with the admonitions were transformed in the scroll (Figs 4 and 5). The screen image has none of the complexity, either psychological or compositional, of the Admonitions scene, but then, it is part of a brightly coloured funerary screen meant to project the moral ideals of the deceased, whereas the scroll image is a travesty, a tragicomic treatment of a moral issue, rendered in a rarefied linear style.Other instances of innovation that alert us to this new concern with process include the manipulation of schemas in the 'family' and 'toilette' scenes. The family group is a clever reworking of a commonplace triangular design (Fig. 6). The toilette scene plays with mirror imagery and image reversal, as well as pivoting around a central vertical axis, as Wu Hung observed, in a kind of ironic reflection on reflection itself (Fig. 7) (Wu, 1995, pp. 268-71). It is this new attitude to the practice of painting that came to define the activity as 'art' and to give it a history.

In the Tang period (618-906), Gu Kaizhi's stature as a non-conformist and wit grew with hagiographic accounts of his life and art, such as that by the critic Zhang Yanyuan (act. c. 847), author of the influential Lidai minghua ji (Record of Great Painters Through the Ages). For Zhang, Gu Kaizhi was the first of the four great painting masters 'Gu, Lu, Zhang and Wu', referring to Gu Kaizhi, Lu Tanwei (act. c. 465-72), Zhang Sengyou (act. 500-50) and Wu Daozi (act. c. 710-60) (Acker, 1954, pp. 177-84).Nor did Gu's stature diminish with the Tang-Song transition, as the literati (shi) emerged as a social class united under an ethical redefinition of the notion of si wen ('this culture of ours'). By the eleventh century, antiquarian interests and a shared sense of individual predicament among prominent literati ushered in a revival for Gu Kaizhi: their ideals were felt to resonate in his artistic idioms. For the eminent literati painter Li Gonglin (c. 1041-1106), recovering Six Dynasties subjects and reviving Gu Kaizhi's 'gossamer line' (gaogu yousi) was a prime concern (Barnhart, 1972).

The learned elite were indeed sensitive to the delicacy and subtlety of line and the patterns it can weave. For many, linear expression, whether in calligraphy or painting, embodied the essential values of Chinese art and culture. When critics likened Gu Kaizhi's line to 'spring silkworms spitting silk' (chun can tu si) (Xia, p. 66; An, juan 3, p. 123; Kohara p. 44), they not only identified the painting tradition with China's image as the land of silk, but also confirmed Gu in his lofty position as the progenitor of the art.

Despite his rakish behaviour, Gu Kaizhi was a court artist (Xuanhe huapu, juan 1, p. 2), and on the face of it, the courtly subject and the consummation of artistic ideals in the Admonitions scroll suggest it could have been an imperial commission. The painting's satirical implications and its status as a 'copy' of a work by Gu Kaizhi remain at issue, however, in any account of its creation.

Many scholars now date this 'copy' to between the sixth and eighth centuries, that is, to a China divided under the late Six Dynasties, or united under the Sui (581-618) or early Tang. Wen Fong, for instance, cites the 'cylindrical roundness' of the Admonitions figures in giving a 'transitional' sixth/seventh century date (Fong, p. 24) (Fig. 6). Comparing it to the imagery in imperial tombs, Kohara gives the early eighth century (Kohara, p. 21). There is also some consensus that the calligraphy of the text inscriptions comes close to the prestigious hand of the late sixth century monk Zhiyong, a descendant of Wang Xizhi (c. 303-c. 361), regarded as the founding father of Chinese calligraphy (Figs 8 and 9). As far as the painting is concerned, if we believe only a great master could have painted it, it may now be time to ask which prominent Gu Kaizhi follower of this era could have done it.

Still, without pressing the connoisseurship issues too keenly here, an overview of the scroll's seals, colophons and wrappers shows how its journey in and out of official and imperial collections over the centuries has been geared towards harnessing its magical power as a record of ancient forms and values. A seal of the Hongwenguan (Academy for the Dissemination of Culture) places it at the heart of early Tang official culture. Seals of rival twelfth and thirteenth century regimes, the Song (960-1279) under the emperors Huizong (r. 1100-25) and Gaozong (r. 1127-62) and the Jin under Emperor Zhangzong (r. 1189-1208), place it within their acrimonious contest for dynastic legitimacy. An elegant protective wrapper depicting a peony from a mounting of this period now heads the panel containing the colophons (Fig. 10).

In private hands from the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644) to the middle of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the scroll was then received like a prodigal child into the collection of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-95). Around the end of the nineteenth century, it came into the possession of a British officer named Captain Clarence Johnson, who took it to the British Museum for appraisal in 1903. It was immediately bought, for œ25, and has since been held there in trust for the British nation, as the museum's charter demands.

The Admonitions scroll's value to those in power has often changed, such that the object itself has been packaged and repackaged under successive regimes to get it to impart a desired ideological message. Huizong and Qianlong stand out as two owners who were particularly successful in the ways they manipulated its meaning.

Huizong's cultural policy was gauged to give account of the myriad blessings of his enlightened rule, and demanded collecting, documenting and publishing the wonders of his time, such as supernatural omens, and of course the great treasures of empire, ancient masterpieces. A series of imperial catalogues followed, including, in 1120, towards the end of Huizong's reign, Xuanhe huapu (Catalogue of the Imperial Painting Collection of the Xuanhe Era). A dogmatic text, Xuanhe huapu rewrote the history of painting to bolster the emperor's politics and cosmology, dealing a serious blow to burgeoning literati aesthetics.

Gu Kaizhi, who like Huizong was a Daoist, is the first artist in 'Daoist and Buddhist Figures', the first category featured (Xuanhe huapu, juan 1); the Admonitions is one of nine works unequivocally ascribed to him. In fact, Gu was widely acknowledged as China's 'first painter': the antiquarian Mi Fu (1052-1107), who was as prickly as he was influential, had begun his Hua shi (History of Painting) with Gu. Moreover, Hua shi suggests the Admonitions scroll was Gu Kaizhi's most talked-about painting in literati circles (Hua shi, pp. 3-4). But Gu's Daoist beliefs, almost incidental in the literati order of things, now sanctioned the new Daoist-inspired art history of Huizong's catalogue. The Admonitions scroll and other imperial treasures were impressed with state seals to affirm their value to the dynastic order. Huizong also engaged Mi Fu's son Mi Youren (1072-1151) to pen colophons to some pieces, endorsing the attributions of the imperial academy, so that, in time, the views expressed in Xuanhe huapu took on aura of normality.

The Yuan master Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), a member of the Song imperial clan, also began what would become a comprehensive reform of the artistic canon by studying Gu Kaizhi's art. Zhao probably did not know the Admonitions, but his Jin-style work, The Mind Landscape of Xie Kun (Youyu qiuhuo) now in The Art Museum, Princeton University, was an allegorical recreation of Gu's portrait of the 'recluse at court', Xie Kun (280-322), mentioned in Xuanhe huapu (see Fong, p. 438, fig. 180). However, to understand Gu Kaizhi, Zhao Mengfu concentrated his energy on reading pictorial lineament as if it were calligraphy. By 'writing' the silken Gu Kaizhi-style lines in this painting as if they were emblems of self-cultivation, as in calligraphy, he could enrich his personal connection as a Chinese scholar-official with the eremitic ideal represented by the subject.

By the late Ming period, the Admonitions scroll was seen as both a dynastic treasure and a relic of Gu Kaizhi's genius with the brush. The wealthy collector Xiang Yuanbian (1525-90), who owned the painting in the late 16th century, described it as 'a possession of the Song Imperial Collection by Gu Kaizhi of the Jin dynasty'.

The scroll re-entered an imperial collection when it was acquired by Qianlong. After remounting, the painting was sandwiched between the emperor's title-piece and a gushing colophon dated 1746. Interestingly, in the way he used pictures to suggest how Chinese beauties longed to have illicit liaisons with him, this emperor's artistic activities have been seen as acting to symbolically feminize and possess Chinese culture (Wu, 1996, pp. 211-21). This is not so far-fetched when one considers that he classed his four pre-eminent paintings, the Admonitions and three attributions to Li Gonglin, as his si mei ('four beauties'; see his colophon to the Admonitions). In the paper she will present at the colloquy, Nixi Cura will argue that when Qianlong smothered the Admonitions painting with his inscriptions and seals, it headed a long list of Chinese chattels, from artefacts to people, that the Manchu emperor branded in his own image.

The Qianlong emperor's title-piece, 'Fragrance of a Red Reed', dictated a Confucian reading of the Admonitions, making it a 'good' Confucian work of art (Fig. 11). Channelling any reading of it through the classical allusion made it once again didactic, and therefore submissive to his sanitized vision of Chinese history. At the same time, the defiant spirit that Gu Kaizhi had represented was unceremoniously broken. The emperor's manipulation of the Admonitions scroll, which he dubbed a 'divine omen from antiquity' (qiangu shenwu), set a high standard for his laundering of the past.After the Admonitions scroll arrived in Britain, it was recognized and thought of again as a masterpiece by Gu Kaizhi. However, shortly after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, some revisionist connoisseurs like the Japanese scholar Taki Seiichi (1873-1945) no longer saw it as a Tang or pre-Tang work, but, on the basis of the 'inferior' calligraphy of the text inscriptions, as a copy dating from the Northern Song period (960-1127) (Taki, 1915). Even today, in what is called 'the golden age of Chinese archaeology', no evidence has emerged to discredit the sixth to eighth century date, or the attribution to Gu Kaizhi.

In the early Tang period, the Admonitions scroll was a treasure of the Hongwenguan. In the late Northern Song, it was an object of 'imperial contemplation', housed in the palace of the same name, Ruisi Dian (an impression of this seal can be seen in Fig. 3). In the mid-Qing period, it was housed in the Forbidden City, in the specially built Jingyi Xuan ('Studio of Calming Pleasures'). This was part of the Jianfu Gong ('Palace of Established Fortune'), the storehouse torched by eunuchs in 1922. Since 1903, the painting has been one of the great treasures of the British Museum. Today it is key to the museum's mission to 'illuminate world cultures', and represents the Orient in the museum's 'Compass' project, the web-based scheme that helps visitors to place worldwide the world's masterworks in the collection. It is the Admonitions scroll, one of the icons of Chinese culture, that will attract delegates from all parts of the globe to London for the colloquy. That event promises to be both orienting and illuminating for our understanding of Chinese and world cultures.