Ink Bamboo, Album Leaves

Each painting in this album depicts one or two sections of vigorous bamboo, each with a distinct posture and energy. The brushwork predominantly employs the center-tip technique, with each stroke following the natural direction of the branches and leaves, varying in weight and pressure. The leaves alternate between dense and light ink, creating rich tonal variation and a rhythmic visual effect. Paintings 2, 3, 5, and 7 break from traditional composition, employing a layout described as ‘no empty sky above, no bare ground below’, which means the elements fill the entire space from top to bottom, leaving no gaps, resulting in a sense of fullness, vigour, and commanding presence.

The album bears no signature or seal by Li Fangying himself. However, the eighth painting features a poem by his friend Zheng Banqiao:

” A slender bamboo casts its shadow across the window,

this was due to last night’s raging wind and rain.

It is not that I refuse help from others,

but that I am happily lost in my own delight in art.”

Among the “Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou,” Zheng Banqiao was most famous for painting bamboo. He held Li Fangying’s bamboo in high regard, composing this poem to express admiration comparable to the respect even Su Shi and Wen Yuke—masters of ink bamboo in the Song dynasty—would have felt. This attests to Li Fangying’s exceptional skill in bamboo painting.