Chapter 23 Section 4 Meticulous Flowers and Birds and Freehand Flowers

Chinese flower-and-bird painting became an independent branch in the late Tang Dynasty, and developed very prosperously in the Five Dynasties and Song Dynasties.Among them, the neat and gorgeous meticulous paintings are dominant.Freehand flower-and-bird painting began to take shape in the Southern Song Dynasty, and matured in the Ming Dynasty, and a group of outstanding painters who wrote opinions in ink and wash appeared.Lin Liang is a representative figure of freehand flower and bird painting in the early Ming Dynasty. Lin Liang (approximately 1416-1480 A.D.), whose style name is Yishan, was born in Funanpu, Guangdong.Tomorrow Shun years, the official paid homage to the Chancellor of the Ministry of Industry, and later he was appointed to the Hall of Renzhi and served as the commander of Jinyiwei.According to the records of "Guangzhou Tongzhi", Lin Liang "was a young police officer, and served as a political envoy. He painted his feathers with ingenuity. Chen Jin's famous painting of a dummy, Liang commented on it from the side, and Jin was angry to criticize it. Good from Chen Qineng, Since then, he has become famous among the gentry." Lin Liangchu learned landscapes from Yan Zong from his hometown, and figures from He Yin, and later specialized in flowers and birds, and was also good at crafts and writing.Huang Quan, the distant ancestor of fine brushwork, learned from Bian Jingzhao recently, and has extremely exquisite works handed down from generation to generation.However, the freehand brushwork in ink and wash is more distinctive, and it can make the viewers move with the "state of prosperity and withering, and the momentum of flying" of flowers and birds.Li Mengyang, a writer of the same generation, wrote a poem about Lin Liang's paintings: "For more than a hundred years, he has painted birds and birds, and later there was Lu Jiqianzhao. The second son seems to be unintentional, sucking a brush to get rid of every hair in his canthus. Lin Liang only uses Ink, opening [jian and] half-sweeping wind and cloud black, waterfowl and landfowl are exquisite, hanging all over the house are full of color." Lin Liang's flower and bird paintings are mostly based on eagles, geese, tits, cranes, pine trees, wild vines, reeds, etc. Grass, weeds and other wild tastes are used to express the natural expression of birds and birds.

For example, "Pine and Crane Picture", 174 cm high and 87 cm wide, printed on silk, ink and color, is now in the Guangdong Provincial Museum.In the painting, there are two red-crowned cranes standing under the old pine tree. One is singing with its head raised, with its long legs standing upright and proud; the other is combing the white feathers on its back with its long beak, leisurely.The whole painting is mainly ink and wash, with a little light color.The artist outlines the back of the crane with fine, short lines, and paints the tail with a thick and thick brush, forming two different textures of ink and white, thick and thin, smooth and heavy.The crane's long legs and claws are clearly structured, thin and powerful, especially the artist's skill in shaping the image of birds.Painting pine and crane together is the most common way of expressing auspicious meaning in traditional painting.Generally, authors only pay attention to the concept of metaphor, but ignore the description of natural life.This picture attaches great importance to the performance of the red-crowned crane's dynamics and expressions.And the environment and atmosphere are carefully depicted.A stout ancient pine crosses obliquely from the right corner of the picture, with twisted branches, contrasting with the upright and beautiful bamboo shadows; slender and colorful wild reeds and wild flowers and weeds on the ground are also swaying in the autumn wind.It makes people have the feeling of being in the scene and bathing in the wild and refreshing.

Lin Liang's existing works include "Eagle Picture", "Double Eagle Picture", "Phoenix Picture", "Shrub Collection Poultry Picture", "Camellia White Feather Picture", "Willow Pond Swimming Duck Picture", "Double Pelicans on the Reed Side (ti Ti〕 Picture", "Pulsatilla Picture" and so on. Although the Ming Dynasty was a period of great development of freehand flower and bird paintings, neat and colorful flower and bird paintings were still very popular before the 16th century.It reached its peak during Chenghua and Hongzhi years (AD 1465-1505).Bian Wenjin and Lu Ji are the most representative.From Lv Ji's "Snow Landscape Feather Picture", we can see the general style of this school of flower and bird painting.

"Snow Scene Feather Picture" is now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.In the picture, white snow covers the earth, the clouds are thousands of miles away, and the cold air is pressing.On the bank of the slope, there is an ancient willow, very old, with long and sparse branches hanging from the curved trunk, standing on its own in a silver dress.There are two turtledoves, which choose high branches to perch, and a group of sparrows gather among the twigs, neither singing nor flying, as if waiting for the night to fall.The weeds and withered reeds by the water were staggered by the snow.On the snow bank, there are four plump ducks.One stretched its neck to look up the tree, and the other three snuggled up to each other, obviously trying to use each other's body temperature to resist the severe cold after the snow.Looking at the whole picture, in the bleak and desolate silence, there is a touch of melancholy.

The author Lu Ji (AD 1477-?) was styled Tingzhen and named Leyu.A native of Yin County (now Ningbo), Zhejiang.During the Hongzhi period (1488-1505 A.D.), he worked in the Imperial Academy of Painting. He was able to paint landscapes and figures, especially flower-and-bird paintings.His flower-and-bird paintings mainly inherited the neat and beautiful style of Southern Song Dynasty courtyard paintings. Each painting of birds and birds follows a certain standard, and the colors are gorgeous and full of air.Lu Ji is also good at placing flowers and birds in the vast and far-reaching scenery, so that the picture produces a vast and remote visual effect.Sometimes he also incorporates some ink and wash freehand brushwork.This "Snow Scene Feather Picture" adopts half-work and half-writing brushstrokes, outlines and dyes, making the picture more vivid.Lu Ji's handed down works include "Osmanthus, Chrysanthemum, Mountain Birds", "Two Birds and Two Pheasants", "Eagle", "Yufu", "Autumn Warbler and Hibiscus", "Snow Bank and Two Reds", etc.

In the late Ming Dynasty, it was Chen Chun and Xu Wei who pushed the freehand flower-and-bird painting to a new stage.In the history of painting, they are collectively called "Qingteng and Baiyang". Chen Chun (1483-1544 A.D.) was born in Wu County, Jiangsu Province.According to the history of painting, Chen Chun was "genious and beautiful, and he learned ancient prose, poems, calligraphy, poems, and paintings in all classics. He tasted the door of Wen Zhengming, and he smiled and said: 'My way of rejuvenation has a teacher's ear, and I can write a book. , Painting has its own way, and I am not my disciple." Beginner painting, patriarchal family, landscape painting Zeng Ermi, Gao Kegong and Wang Meng, deeply influenced by ink and wash freehand brushwork.The flower-and-bird painting benefited from Shen Zhou, which is simple, delicate and elegant.He draws with a moderate amount of brushes, and likes to color with light ink.Especially good at sketching.Wang Shizhen said in "Yan (Yanyan) State Continuation": "Since the Shengguo (Yuan Dynasty), the writers of flowers have never been as good as Wu Jun, and since Shen Qinan, Wu Jun has never been as good as Chen Daofu and Lu Shuping." The words of praise, Chen Chun's freehand flowers are indeed unique.For example, "Camellia Narcissus", 136.1 cm high and 32.6 cm wide, is now in the Shanghai Museum.A beautiful stone stands in the middle, in front of the stone there is a cluster of beautiful daffodils, behind the stone is a tall and straight camellia.All are written in ink and wash without coloring.The leaves of the narcissus are outlined in light ink with soft and smooth strokes, and the daffodils are also outlined in light ink, but the brushwork is different.The beautiful flowers are hidden among the long leaves, like a fairy looking out in the spring breeze, light, graceful and charming.For the camellia with intertwined branches and stems, the leaves are dotted with light ink, and the tendons are drawn with heavy ink. The camellia is drawn in white. Although there is no color, it has the feeling of "clumps of green leaves lining Yaohua".

Chen Chun's freehand flowers have a great influence on later generations.Modern masters such as Pu Hua, Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, etc. have all studied his painting methods.Chen Chun's handed down works include "Sunflower Picture", "Chrysanthemum Picture", "Pine Chrysanthemum Picture", "Vase Lotus Picture", "Indus Xuan Stone Picture", "Flower Fan" and so on. Xu Wei, who was slightly later than Chen Chun, was more innovative and an outstanding master who created freehand brushwork flowers in ink painting. Xu Wei (1521-1593 A.D.) was born in Shanyin (now Shaoxing, Zhejiang) with the style name Wenchang and the name Tianchi.Born in a declining bureaucratic family.Since childhood, he has been extremely intelligent and quick-witted.If you fail the eight provincial examinations, you can't succeed in fame.He once served as an aide to Hu Zongxian, the governor of Zhejiang and Fujian (the official in charge of military affairs in the southeast).After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the politics was dark. In the power struggle of the upper ruling group, Hu Zongxian was arrested and committed suicide in prison.Xu Wei has a stubborn personality, has repeatedly failed, and has accumulated depression and anger for a long time. Facing this blow, he became mentally disturbed and attempted suicide several times. He was later imprisoned for manslaughtering his wife.After being released from prison, he was 53 years old.He has tasted the sufferings of life and the harshness of the world, and since then he has traveled all over the country, singing and drinking, reckless, and expressing his cynical feelings in his poems and paintings.In his later years, he suffered from poverty and illness, and sold calligraphy and paintings for a living, but he still despised the powerful and powerful, and would rather "wander alone under the moon with hunger" than bow to the powerful.In the end, he died in poverty and depression.

Xu Wei has many artistic talents, and is proficient in poetry, calligraphy, painting and writing.Created a large number of poems and plays.He started to learn painting in middle age and became more mature in his later years.What is valuable about him is that on the basis of extensively learning the experience of predecessors, he is not bound by established methods, boldly creates, develops the freehand splash-ink painting method, and opens up the expressive field of ink and wash.He changed the implicit and elegant taste prevailing at that time, and created a strange and wild new style with the pen and ink of "sweeping casually without intention, whether it will be sunny or rainy".For example, "Ink Grape" is 116.4 cm high and 64.3 cm wide, and is now in the Palace Museum in Beijing.In the painting, old vines and vines slant out from the right, scattered and drooping, with branches and leaves, dancing and dancing.The bunches of grapes are crystal clear.The unrestrained pen and ink, imposing manner, make people feel a kind of stubborn vitality.The poem inscribed on the upper left of the painting reads: "I have become a poor man for half my life, and the evening wind blows in my independent study. No one buys the pearl under the pen, and throws it in the wild vines." One.

The freehand brushwork painting method pioneered by Xu Wei has profoundly influenced the painting circles of later generations, and the freehand brushwork painting style has not declined to this day.Xu Wei's handed down works include "Peony Banana Stone Picture", "Qingteng Bookstore Picture", "Yellow Armor Picture", "Miscellaneous Flower Picture Scroll", "Yiling Picture", "Ten Sages Collection Food [Zhuan Zhuan] Picture", " Ink Bamboo Picture" and so on.