"Holden, Wendy; 'A Guide to Cataloguing Chinese Art', Visual Resources Association Special Bulletin No. 13, (1050138x). f22r37z42 Alternate names: Fa Jo-chen, ??? Qing dynasty (b Jiaozhou (modern Jiao xian), Shandong Province, 1613; d 1696). Chinese painter and government official. Fa was active mostly in Anhui Province and is often loosely associated with the Anhui school of the early Qing period (1644?1911), but he is best grouped with the eccentrics or individualists of the period rather than with the more conservative traditions of the Orthodox school. The 19th-century text Tongyin lun hua (?Discourses on painting in the shade of the paulownia tree?), referring to his highly original painting style, noted that Fa ?followed a path of his own?. Nevertheless he is seldom ranked among the foremost painters of the period, his output and influence being limited. Fa gained his jinshi degree in 1646 and joined the Hanlin Academy in Beijing in the same year. He held a number of government posts and even helped repel Ming loyalist attacks on the Manchus in Fujian Province. He served as a judicial commissioner in Zhejiang (1662?4) and became Lieutenant-Governor of Anhui Province in 1668. After losing that post (allegedly for concealing a shortage in a friend?s accounts), he tried to enter service again in 1679 but failed the boxue hongci examination, which brought his official career to an end. A large hanging scroll, Misty Mountain Landscape (Stockholm, �stasiat. Mus.), exemplifies Fa?s painting style. Composed almost exclusively of a rocky slope and mist-enshrouded trees, it suggests a primeval volcanic wilderness with vapours escaping from fissures and swirling masses. The nervous line of Fa?s rock contours, his ambiguous rendering of landscape forms (which can sometimes be read as hollows rather than crags and hillocks) and the pronounced contrast of light and shadow animate his images, producing an effect of strangeness. Like most of his other landscapes, this painting represents a mountainside after heavy rain (some examples portray the landscape in rain). Fa?s own inscriptions and other evidence reveal that this was a longstanding pictorial metaphor for good government?the effective and benevolent administrator brings benefits to the people he governs as rain brings good crops to farmers. In painting numerous depictions of this theme, presumably for others who, like himself, held positions under the Manchus and so were open to accusations of collaboration from Ming loyalists, he was asserting the virtuousness and wisdom of such practice and justifying his own decision to serve the Manchu regime (a course some considered dishonorable, even turncoat). --DOA"@en . . "Fa, Ruozhen"@en . . "2015-06-18"^^ . "2015-07-16"^^ . "2015-08-25"^^ . "2015-06-18"^^ . "2015-07-16"^^ . "2015-08-25"^^ . "1613-1696"@en . . .