Gao Fenghan’s (1683–1749) Path to Eccentricity and the Growth of Epigraphical Writing in Early Qing Yangzhou

This paper investigates Gao Fenghan’s (1683–1749) path to artistic eccentricity and uses it as a case study for examining the growth of epigraphical writing in seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Yangzhou. Scholars have categorized Gao as one of the “Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou,” a group of idiosyncratic artists who were active in southern China during the early Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Among these artists, Gao earned a reputation because of the “left-handed style” he developed after the paralysis of his right hand. I argue that this “disability” helped generate his artistic idiosyncrasy, which was popular in the Yangzhou art market, and that his “left-handed calligraphy” adopted characteristics of archaic writing from ancient inscriptions on Han-dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) steles from his hometown Shandong in northern China. Shandong’s abundance of ancient steles was a major source for epigraphic study that reached its maturity in northern China in the mid-eighteenth century. Previous scholarship on epigraphic study has focused on its role in the north but neglected its influence in the south, where eccentric artists like Gao drew upon Chinese cultural heritage while introducing stylistic innovations. This paper analyzes Gao’s development as an “eccentric” artist and uses his work as a case study to investigate three broader concerns: how artists in Yangzhou responded to epigraphic study in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; how cultural encounters between northern and southern styles inspired practitioners of both approaches; and how “artistic eccentricity” emerged from these exchanges in early Qing Yangzhou.