Lin Chun
Exquisite Song flower-and-bird realism
Lin Chun(林椿) was from Qiantang in the Southern Song Dynasty (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang). His birth and death years are unknown. During the Chunxi period of Emperor Xiaozong (1174–1189), he served as an imperial court painter and was awarded a gold belt. He was skilled in painting flowers, birds, insects, and fruits, following the styles of Zhao Chang and Xu Chongsi. His coloring was light and delicate, and his brushwork was meticulous. He especially excelled at small-scale life sketches, focusing on capturing natural forms, and people of his time said his work “perfectly captures the essence of life; the orioles seem ready to take flight and look almost alive.” His surviving works include the Shanghai Museum’s fan painting *Plum and Bamboo with Cold Birds*, and pieces in the Palace Museum in Beijing like *Fruit Ripens with Birds*, *Grapes and Grass Insects*, and *Loquat and Mountain Birds*. His paintings often use washes to show light and shadow and the flow of space, cleverly using elegant colors to hide outlines while highlighting details like leaves, insect holes, and decay. In *Fruit Ripens with Birds*, he uses bold strokes for the branches and delicate washes for the leaves and fruits, with finely detailed feathers on the birds. *Loquat and Mountain Birds* shows a white-eye bird intently watching ants on the fruit, while *Grapes and Grass Insects* accurately depicts four kinds of insects among the leaves. The *Pipa Mountain Birds* in the Taipei Palace Museum has a composition similar to *Fruit Ripens with Birds* but is less detailed. *Plum and Bamboo with Cold Birds* is one of the few Song Dynasty paintings with a clear signature that still exists, capturing a partial view of plum and bamboo to evoke the quiet, cold mood of winter.