| dc.description.abstract | Under the influences of the merchandise economic development and the vanity trend of the society, the late Ming Dynasty consumer groups of calligraphy and painting expanded from scholar-bureaucarats to military officers or eunuches; meanwhile, the merchants who ran successful business had also become part of the consumer groups. On the one hand, in order to lobby or to bribe, the calligraphies and paintings were seen as an important intermedium in the political network management. On the other hand, for rich merchants, the calligraphies and paintings became a symbolic capital used to mark their exquisiteness. These merchants, military officers or eunuches who imitated the culture of scholars did expand the market of calligraphies and paintings, which caused the price increase of works of art of Dynasty of Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang. In order to balance the supply and need of the art market, the mainstream merchandise of art in the late Ming Dynasty thus was gradually turned to focus on contemporary works of art of Ming Dynasty.
There are two main ways of merchandise of calligraphies and paintings in the late Ming Dynasty. One was based on the periodical art fairs, regularly-set antique shops, or calligraphy and painting shops, which were located in the cities of Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, or Suzhou. The other way was based on the merchandise trading between businessmen who travelled from places to placed trying to collect and buy goods with low price and to sell goods with high price. These businessmen of calligraphy and painting consisted of a wide range of backgrounds. Some were scholars who failed in the imperial examinations. Some were professional antique dealers coming from Huizhou and Jiang Nan. Due to the huge profit, many of these businessmen even acted fraud.
In the late Ming Dynasty, more and more scholars made their living by earning royalties or even turned themselves into businessmen to run their own art business. No matter they chose either way to earn a living, the scholars always took the stance of hermits who got into art dealing business through frequent social activities such as joining artist gathering or art fairs which made these scholars keep a close connection with scholar-bureaucrats in power. Their multiple social identities also made the role of art creating and dealing more complicated. In result, the difference of tastes between elites and common people became more and more unobvious because of this phenomenon of profit-making and art-popularizing.
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