Four Gentlemen

Orchids, bamboo, chrysanthemum, and plum (ran, take, kiku, and ume) are the ‘four gentlemen’ (shikunshi) revered by East Asian literati. They have been a popular subject among Chinese scholar painters since the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and nanga artists of eighteenth and nineteenth century Japan, where their differing forms presented artists with a set of technical skills to master. Each plant is associated with a season (orchids with spring, bamboo with summer, chrysanthemum with autumn, and plum with winter) and a range of qualities that resonated with Confucian and Zen ideals. The orchid is associated with purity, loyalty, incorruptibility, and modesty and its long, tapered leaves and fine petals of the plant make it ideally suited to the play of ink and brush.