Chen Rong
Southern Song dynasty, Song dynasty · Chinese landscape painting, Song dynasty art, Dragon painting
The story
Unrolled, the Nine Dragons scroll in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston runs almost 15 metres, one long band of ink and colour in which dragons coil through cloud, spray, rock and fire. It carries the date 1244 and is attributed to Chen Rong, a scholar-official of the Southern Song, the period when the Song court ruled from Hangzhou in the south of China. Dragons were tied to water and rain, and in Daoist thought to the restless forces of nature, and Chen made them his specialty.
He also served in government posts and used the art name Suoweng. A 14th-century account describes his method in vivid terms. He made clouds by splashing ink and mist by spraying water, and when drunk he would shout, pull off his cap, soak it in ink and smear it across the paper, then finish the details with a brush.
His dates are only approximate, from around 1200 to the 1260s, and few of his dragons survive, among them scrolls attributed to him in Kansas City and Tokyo. Boston bought the Nine Dragons in 1917 from the dealers Yamanaka and Company for 25,000 dollars.
