Bada Shan Ren Museum

Name：Ba Da Shan Ren Museum (八大山人纪念馆)
Address：259 Qing Yun Pu Road, Nanchang Jiangxi (江西省南昌市青云谱路259号 联系)

Also known as The Former Residence of Bada Shanren, this museum was once a thousand year old temple called Qingyunpu before the artist moved there in 1661. Many people consider this tranquil museum to be one of the most relaxing places in Nanchang, located as it is in the suburbs south of the city far removed from the crowds and the traffic. The area surrounding the museum has recently been landscaped to form a large park where visitors can wander under willow trees or picnic by the lake. The museum itself is a wonderful example of a courtyard house, and is now home to exhibitions of Bada Shanren's calligraphy, paintings and poems.

Bada Shanren (1626-1705) was actually born as Zhu Da and was a descendant of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. His family, the Yiyang branch of the Ming imperial family, was noted for producing scholars, poets and calligraphers so it is not surprising that Zhu Da himself was considered to be a child prodigy and began painting and writing poems in his early childhood.
Although his early years were lived in comfort and privilege his world fell apart in the 1640s with the Manchu invasion of Ming dynasty China. As the Manchus pushed south in their efforts to wipe out resistance Zhu Da sought refuge in a Buddhist temple where he later became a monk and took on the name Chuanqi. In about 1680 however he renounced his status as a monk and once more took up his brush in order to support himself. In 1684 he took on the name Bada Shanren (八大山人 "Mountain Man of the Eight Greats"). Bada Shanren, as he is now known, remained a staunch loyalist of the Ming throughout his life and often used his paintings as a means with which to protest the overthrow of the Ming dynasty and the installation of the Manchu Qing dynasty in its place.
As a leading painter of the Qing dynasty, Bada Shanren’s works had a profound influence on the direction Chinese painting took from the late 17th century onward. His style, known as Shui Mo Hua, (水墨畫), is a type of brush painting which utilizes various concentrations of black ink and wash. He combined this with his trademark sharp freehand brush strokes to produce some of the boldest and most enigmatic paintings to have ever been created by a Chinese artist up to that period. He is also considered as one of the earliest, if not the first, abstract painter in China.


For more on the style and influence of Bada Shanren see
http://www.zhuweiartden.com/ZW/Articles/Article3.htm

Other links
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chin/ho_L.1997.30.htm
http://www.chinapage.com/painting/badashanren/badashanren.html