shixiang garden

shixiang garden lies in the huaide street, geshan village, jiangnan avenue, which is the residence and teaching room for ju lian and ju chao —famous drawer of lingnan school in late qing dynasty with a floor area of 640 m2 (some says 530 m2). to its south is the mountain; to its north is sea. the courtyard is built with gray bricks, with quite and poetic environment. there is a blue cloud lane paved with red sand-rock. to the west of the lane is the gate to the garden leading to a brick-paved lane. on the gate of the garden, there is stele “shixiang garden” in official script by yang qiguang in 1861. to the south of the alley is the site of xiaoyueqing room—the residence and workshop of ju lian. the west part is the site of residence for ju chao. the two residences were destroyed during japanese invasion in guangzhou, with only remains left. there are 10 kinds of flowers in the garden like yellow jasmine and arabian jasmine. this is why the garden is name shixiang (ten scents). zilihua building is in the northwest of the garden, facing south with width of 6.5 m and depth of 4.4 m, which was originally bungalow with round ridge roof and gray bricks. in the 60s of the last century, it was changed into hard peak, with a wood stele of 1.5 m long and 0.38 m wide of “zilihua buidling” in official script. the west part of the room is the teaching area for ju lian and the east part is the study. gao jianfu and chen shuren—the initiators of lingnan school of painting have studies here. there are articles left like ju lian drawing box carved with “painting”, cabinet for treasured paintings and scripts, cabinet for books and dolomite stele carved with “ju lian rang zhi jian”.

ju lian (1828～1904), shigang as the style and guquan as the title, born in geshan village. he is good at painting fish, insect and flower, as well as seal cutting. ju chao (1811—1865), meisheng as the style and meichao and tonight hut owner as the titles, born in geshan. his father died early. his cousin ju chao taught him drawing. they were later called “two jus”, who paid attention to sketch and were good at methods of water and powder impacts. their style was featured with brilliant and vivid paintings of fish, flower and insect, which had great influence on the later neo-traditional chinese painting movement and the emergence of lingnan school of painting.