Copy of Gong Xian’s Painting of Wild Thoroughwort

Inscription: Fragrant cymbidium is scattered across the mountains amid thistles and thorns. The cymbidium is tangled in the lush thoroughwort. The woodcutters eagerly cut only the thorny fi rewood, leaving behind the fragrant cymbidium to resist the upcoming winter. [Chang's] copy of Gong Xian.

Here Chang copied the work of Gong Xian (1618–1689), an innovative and eccentric artist active during the turmoil that beset China in the mid- to late 1600s. To express some of Gong's psychological turmoil, Chang set sharp-edged vegetation against smooth stone. Chang used dark stone to bring out the brighter center, suggesting a glimmer of life and hope. This composition was to become a frequent resource when Chang needed an island subject.

Gong, who remained loyal to the Ming dynasty after China was conquered by the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty in 1644, spent his fi nal years as a Buddhist monk in seclusion. In the inscription on the painting copied here, Gong implies a relationship between his moral character and the cymbidium, which is tough and fragrant even in the face of winter.