禪心渾不動，僧臘靜偏長。
心遠物皆靜，何須擇地居。

清初四僧之中，弘仁的藝術生涯最為短暫，但其遺民意結深厚，處處流露家國情懷。弘仁(1610-1664)，俗姓江，名韜，字六奇。安徽歙縣人，擅詩文，以孝行名。本為明末秀才，順治二年(1645)，歙縣義軍抗清失敗以後，唐王朱聿鍵(1602-1646)在福州建立南明隆武王朝，驅使他離鄉赴閩，有志抗清之心可想而之。翌年，福州失守，他隨後(1647)在武夷山削髮為僧，法名弘仁，字漸江，號梅花古衲，皈依古航道舟(1585-1666)，時為三十八歲。自此雲遊各地，後回歙縣，居西郊太平興國寺和五明寺，經常遊走於黃山、白岳之間，與當地賈儒常有往來，潛心佛學及繪畫創作，詩畫寄興，不乏感懷身世之作，眷懷故國。

在晚明時期，徽商勢力崛起，他們好文藝活動，收藏甚豐，黃賓虹研究便有道:「豐南吳用卿藏倪黃最精。漸師交吳不炎，得見雲林真跡，盡將前所作銷毀。」此文化土壤有助漸江遠師古人，尤擅擬倪瓚及黃公望，直追元人隱逸山水。同時，黃山的巍峨景貌又提供了創作參考，帶動了不一樣的視覺經驗，造就了漸江的獨有風格，以古人與大自然結合，創造出全新面貌，成為「新安畫派」先驅，不單啟蒙了同一代人，正如程邃(1607-1692)所言：「吾鄉畫學正脉，以文心開闢，漸江稱獨步。」後來的藝術大家如黃賓虹、張大千等也受其啟發，影響深遠。

處世厭多擾，入山愁不深。
安禪忘去住，高坐在梨床。

漸江作品少有，珍品稀見於世，本冊為其一。本冊十九開，松山樹石十幅，詩文書法九幅，蝴蝶裝，每幅僅18.7 x 12.9厘米， 畫幅袖珍但寓意深遠，面貌多變。設色、水墨相得益彰，以寫意為主，多是師古後的心中丘壑：高山峻嶺者構圖平穩，令人聯想到范寬山水；平遠山水者一河兩岸，是為倪氏畫風也；黃公望式礬頭山石疏密有致；用色也略顯沈石田影子。靜物如樹石等開，逸氣縱橫，輕鬆駕御，觀之全冊，穩重成熟，小中見大，用筆瘦勁，用墨著色簡潔，落落大方，寫出無人之境，不乏秀逸空寂意味，使人有一種遠離塵囂之感。

本冊書畫對開，據其自題字可知，漸江應連茹居士所委託，繪於剡藤紙小册，並於對開頁各題沈周(1427-1509)詩一首，惟連茹居士資料欠奉，待後考。詩文內容或有描寫景物，或有投影禪心，藉物寄情，隱喻避世之理想。此舉不但豐富了畫面，互相呼應，以漸江如斯人生背景，孝悌忠信後遁入空門，很難想像他的作品沒有遺民色彩，「安禪忘去住，高坐在梨床」，在詩文內容選擇上，又何嘗不是反映了漸江的人生態度？漸江其他如本幅小開冊者，例子可參見故宮博物院藏《豐溪山水圖冊》設色八開、美國弗利爾美術館藏《豐溪山水圖冊》水墨十開，以及安徽博物院藏《沚阜圖》水墨十開等。相比之下，惟本幅有詩文對題，書畫合璧，借筆墨以及文字舒發情懷，尤為難得。

遺墨空陳跡，清歌發楚音。
披圖百年後，感慨浹竦襟。

本冊遞藏流傳有序，道光十六年(1836) 司馬金萼(乾隆狀元金甡之孫)修葺弘仁之遺塚，補種十二棵梅花，後請金石僧達受(1791-1858)刻記此事於如意寺，同年達受便於市肆間得此書畫小册，雖「末頁已缺一詩，無從覓補矣。」但其作品罕有，「詩畫俱得清靈之氣」，故深感恩澤，並邀請金萼題跋於後，「愛玩不釋」，此軼事以及金萼題跋內文亦紀錄於其著作《寶素室金石書畫編年錄》中。兩年後(1838) ，達受僑庽蘇州主持滄浪亭時，手自裝池，並以篆書「漸江老人書畫合璧」大字為扉頁。冊上另有其舊署簽，書於道光丁末 (1847) 在都門南旋，以上可見達受愛惜有加，隨同遊歷，不時賞玩。

達受於丙辰 (1856) 年再贈此冊予楊繼振 (1820-1901) ，楊氏題寫新署簽，現完好保留。楊氏字幼雲，漢軍鑲黃旗人，金石、圖書及錢幣收藏甚豐，他的《紅樓夢》版本收藏尤為著名。於兩年後，楊繼振題跋於冊後並記之，因《寶素室金石書畫編年錄》所記之事跡至道光三十年 (1850) 止，故未及收錄此事。誠然，二人似乎常有書畫交流，其他有達受印及楊繼振題跋的作品，可見大都會博物館藏王鑒《仿古山水圖冊》。另有畫家殷樹柏 (1769-1847) 及篆刻家及金石學家趙之琛 (1781-1852) 鑑賞印，識者自珍。

During the Qing conquest of the Ming, Hongren (1610-1664) emerged as one of the four great monk painters of the early Qing dynasty, a category which also includes Zhu Da (1626-1705), Shitao (1642-1707), and Kun Can (1612-1674). To understand the unease that confronted the literati during periods punctuated by dynastic change, it is illuminating to look at the lives of artists amid the inexorable tide. The artist known as Hongren was born with the name Jiang Tao in Shexian, Anhui. He received a classical education, was said to have been a good poet, and passed the prefectural examination which, under normal circumstances, would have put him on the path to an official career. However, it was a t.mes of rampant corruption and with the fall of the Ming dynasty, he eschewed political entanglements and fled Shexian in 1645 when Nanjing came under the control of Qing forces. In Fujian where the Southern Ming prince of Tang set up a stronghold, Jiang Tao joined the resistance army, but when loyalist forces were ultimately defeated, he then decided to become a monk.

Scholars suggest that Jiang Tao’s decision to become a monk may have been largely an act of political resistance, one taken by many like-minded scholars of the t.mes to resist the new Manchu rule. However, there are often many forces at work in the murky shadowlands of dynastic change. While it seems to be the case that the downfall of Ming rule was the impetus, Jiang Tao’s decision to become a monk might not be construed as a purely loyalist act. His self-imposed monastic discipline was also strongly motivated by spiritual instinct. He adopted the Buddhist name Hongren (“Vast Humanity”) – styled himself as Wuzhi, also named Jianjiang. Hongren practiced a form of Zen Buddhism under the tutelage of Guhang Daozhou (1585-1666) at the famed Wuyi mountains of Fujian.

Hongren spent the remainder of his short life in monasteries in and around the area of his birth. He became an important master of landscapes and the leading artist of the Huangshan, or Anhui, School of painting. As Hongren was a dedicated practitioner of Zen Buddhism, these beliefs form the heart of his work. His painting style is characterized by dry, angular, and refined brushwork combined with a near-geometric treatment of form and an architectonic sense of structure. Rocks and mountains are expressed in a sparse and austere style, relying primarily on contour lines to render volume and form, with little interior texturing. Chief among Hongren’s stylistic sources are the two great Yuan dynasty masters, Ni Zan (1301-1374) and Huang Gongwang (1269-1354).

Hongren’s bimo ("brush-and-inkwork") follows the lead of Ni Zan, discernible in the dilute ink and colors tones, the use of a thin, reedy dry brush line and the preference for crisp, geometric or angular forms – all hallmarks of Ni Zan’s brush style. Hongren's dry, angular brushwork, as well as the stark, unadorned simplicity of his tree and rock forms, are reminiscent of the detached purity evoked by Ni Zan's landscapes. The artful juxtaposition and overlapping of angular and rounded forms would be the basis of neat compositional logic in his paintings, derived from the landscapes of Huang Gongwang. Hongren undoubtedly felt a kinship with Ni Zan and Huang Gongwang that transcended stylistic influences. Like Hongren, these Yuan dynasty painters were yimin (leftover subjects), who retreated from society and spent the last years of their lives engaged in spiritual and artistic pursuits. That sense of retreat is instinct in Hongren’s Album of Landscapes and Calligraphies.

One intriguing aspect of Hongren’s works is the apparent influence of Fan Kuan (990 – 1030); the massive, rectangular mountain forms from the Song dynasty master’s Travelers among Mountains and Streams recur and echo in Hongren’s landscapes. While Hongren’s monumentalism is distinct from that of the Northern Song, generally regarded as the golden age when classical landscape tradition reached its apogee, a complete literatus would be been conscious and conversant of the full scope of this past, to reference and to innovate upon the tradition. The purpose of Fan Kuan’s monumentalism was to convey the glory of empire, which stands in contradiction with Hongren’s Zen-inflected brush-and-inkwork. This paradox of two visual references ­– to Fan Kuan crossed with Ni Zan – brought together in a seamless aesthetic union suggests Hongren’s longing for a glorious past as well as his retreat from political life.

The album consists of nineteen pages – ten small paintings of mountains, trees and stones, and nine pages of calligraphy. The size of the work, measuring 18.7 x 12.9 cm, would not immediately suggest monumental landscapes, and yet belies the profundity expressed upon the paper. The work speaks in a spare, pure language that sustains a transcendent silence, carried forth in the freehand brushwork that minimally evokes craggy hills and valleys devoid of human presence, an extreme pictorial approach that conjures the imposing presence of ancient mountains, and dilute ink and color that offer the bare suggestion of density and shadow. It is a world populated by forlorn pines and lonely boulders. These remote landscapes show the quiet ascendency of empty rivers and still spaces, referencing ideas expressed by older masters while also reworking them in an ever-radical near empty minimalism. As the sublime stillness descends, the lonely images present not an elegy but an exaltation of silence – one that has less to do with any actual form created by nature, than it has to do with a more internal landscape.

Within Hongren’s extant works, which by that description alone would be considered rare in the world, the current album is highly unusual for several reasons. The album format is of small size and of a special yan teng paper. According the Hongren’s inscription on the album, he created this work at the request of a friend named Lianru, who asked the artist not only to paint ten landscapes but also to juxtapose them with companion pages of calligraphy. This is one of the key highlights, as it is rare to see so much of the artist’s calligraphy grouped together in a single work. Similar examples of Hongren’s works, but with less calligraphy, can be found at The National Palace Museum, Beijing, the Anhui Museum and Freer Gallery of Art. For the current album, Hongren’s wrote the poetry of Shen Zhou (1427-1509) in elegant kaishu regular script, and occasionally with xingshu running script. Why did he choose Shen Zhou? He expressed an appreciation of the “open expressiveness” and “enduring value” of these poems, a pronouncement which may be taken at face value. Alternative deeper reasons for Hongren’s selection – based on personal or political parallels between the two artists – remain open to interpretation and would be best left to the connoisseur to speculate.

Shen Zhou was an early Ming dynasty literatus; he was a master of many schools of painting but ultimately create his own unique style and became the founder of the Wu School. In his poetry and his paintings Shen Zhou captures the interior world of the literary imagination. He led a life of self-imposed retirement having rejected an official career. It is tempting to imagine that Hongren must have felt an affinity based on these parallels alone. If so, the Qing dynasty artist makes no mention of it.

What is apparent and deeply moving about the work is the consummate compatibility of in spirit. Shen Zhou’s poetry finds its perfect articulation expressed through Hongren’s brush, presenting solitude as high art. The paintings were never intended as a pictorial illustration to mirror the narrative content of the poems, together they have an undeniable thematic resonance that blur the distinction between painting and poetry to manifest the internal landscape of the artist.

The album frontispiece reads “Jianjiang’s Combined Calligraphy and Painting,” an inscription written by the famous antiquarian monk Dashou (1791-1858). How this work gained its frontispiece is a charming story that takes place more than 150 years after Hongren, involving a man by the name of Sima Jine (the grandson of Jin Shen, a zhuangyuan who was the top candidate of the high imperial examination during the Qianlong reign).

In 1836, Sima Jine was traveling to Anhui and set out to visit the tomb of Hongren. There he discovered the tomb abandoned and in a state of disrepair, so he took pains to refurbish Hongren’s resting place and replant twelve plum blossoms, knowing well that the great artist in life particularly appreciated these blooms. Upon completing this restoration, he thought of the monk Dashou, who was renowned for his skill at making rubbings s of not only stele, but also bronze vessels, stone tablets and other materials of aesthetic and literary value. Sima Jine’s made a request of Dashou that he create an engraving at the Ruyi Temple of this event, which is why we know these details today. It just so happened that later in the same year, Dashou found and acquired this present work of paintings and calligraphy in a shop. Despite the missing last page of calligraphy, Dashou recognized the value and rarity of such a work by Hongren. The monk was delighted, perhaps feeling that his earlier good deed had visited this stroke of luck upon him. In gratitude, he invited Sima Jine to write the story colophons at the back of the album. This anecdote was recorded in his publication Baosushi Jinshi Shuhua Biannianlu. Two years later in 1838, Dashou decided to remount the album and with his own brush added the frontispiece in large seal script, including a signature.

Another colophon written at the back belongs to Yang Jizhen (1820-1901), an important collects or of the t.mes . It seems that in 1856 Yang received the album from Dashou. Since Baosushi Jinshi Shuhua Biannianlu does not go beyond 1850, this exchange was not reflected in these records. While evidence of interaction between Dashou and Yang Jizhen is not available, many works, including Wang Jian's Landscapes in the Style of Old Masters at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, bear the seal marks of both figures suggesting a consistent exchange of calligraphy and paintings between the two connoisseurs.