*c. 550-604
Zhan Ziqian was a native of Yangxin County, Shandong Province, and his early life is unknown, he was an official in the Northern Dynasty when he was about thirty or forty years old, and served as a doctor in Chaosan after the establishment of the Sui Dynasty. Historically, he was known for his paintings. His paintings cover a wide range of subjects, including figures, chariots and horses, landscapes, and pavilions. His painting techniques are varied, and the figures are painted with color to stain their faces, and their expressions are all colorful: the horses are painted in their own way, and the horses stand, stand, walk, lie down, soar, leap, and gallop are vividly depicted, and the landscape is thousands of miles away, fully expressing the far-reaching sense of space in nature.
"Spring Tour" Zhan Ziqian has painted murals in Luoyang Tiannu Temple and Chang'an Lingbao Temple for a long time. Until the Song Dynasty, his work "Ghost Tug of War" was still preserved in the ancient temple of Yongji, Shanxi. His most famous painting is "You Chun Tu". "Spring Tour" is now in the collection of the Palace Museum, the scroll is on silk, 43 cm long, 80.5 cm wide. This painting is set against the backdrop of the magnificent mountain scenery in March, showing the vast space where water and sky meet. The picture is full of green mountains, the lake is melting, the scholars or the horses are on the trail or stop at the lake, the ladies are boating on the water, the wind is warm, the microwave is sparkling, the peaches and apricots are blooming, and the green grass is like seedlings, which is beautiful. "You Chun Tu" is widely circulated, and the Tang Dynasty folk song sings: Painting landscapes, Zhan Ziqian, You Chun Tu, spring Guangyan: the mountains are green, the water is blue, near the ruler, thousands of miles away. Through the secluded path, the peak turns, next to the small bridge, the green tree covers, the woman stands, in front of the bamboo fence, the spring in the south of the Yangtze River, the beauty is infinite.
"Landscape painting is unique Zhan Ziqian's landscape painting is unique in the history of Chinese painting. In terms of the spatial treatment of the faces, "Spring Tour" has changed the disproportionate situation in the past paintings in which the people are larger than the mountains and the trees are arranged like outstretched arm cloth fingers. The vast and far-reaching horizontal painting of the microwave of the lake is quite successful. In terms of expression techniques, the wheel of the mountain and river house characters is outlined with ink lines, then filled with blue-green color, and then re-outlined with dark colors, and the trees and figures are directly colored and pointed out, although the shape is small, but vivid.
The picture is elegant in color and rich in decoration. When Zhan Zidu died in 604, his style of landscape painting directly influenced the blue landscape examples of Li Sidiao's father and son in the Tang Dynasty, and was praised as the "ancestor of Tang painting" by later generations. "You Chun Tu" is the most # scroll landscape in existence, and has always been regarded as a priceless treasure. In front of the volume of "You Chun Tu", there is also the inscription of Song Zong Zhao Xin's handwritten book "Zhanzi Qian Yu Chun Tu", which is particularly precious.