Hundred Flowers Scroll (Chinese Painting · Detail) Yun Shouping (Qing Dynasty)
Hundred Flowers (Chinese Painting · Detail) Zhou Zhimian (Ming Dynasty)
Hundred Flowers Picture Scroll (Chinese Painting · Detail) Yang Jieyu (Southern Song Dynasty)
Hundred Flowers Picture Scroll (Chinese Painting · Detail) Yang Jieyu (Southern Song Dynasty)
"On a sunny day, the warm wind produces wheat, and the green shade and grass are better than the flowers", Wang Anshi once said that the green trees and grass in summer are far better than a hundred flowers, having said that, ancient and modern painters can not help but use their wonderful hands to try to keep this piece of "flower world" on the paper. In the history of Chinese painting, there have been many famous "Hundred Flowers".
The Tang Dynasty poet Wu Rong wrote in the poem "Mural Folding Bamboo Miscellaneous Words": "It is not that there has never been a root, and the painter takes the power to teach and destroy. "That's the beauty of breaking branches. Now in the collection of the Palace Museum, the ink and pen painting on paper "Hundred Flowers" created by an anonymous painter of the Southern Song Dynasty is taken from the form of "Folded Branch Flowers", which captures the most characteristic parts of natural flowers into the painting, which is more delicate and moving than the overall depiction.
The painting is nearly 17 meters long and features about 60 species of seasonal flowers. The whole volume is pure ink, but also add white depiction of flowers, except for the plum blossom at the frontispiece, which is similar to the painting method of Yang Wuyi with a slightly freehand brush, the others are all written with ink pen, with ink instead of color, and outline ink dyeing and white drawing, reflecting the precise and meticulous painting style of Song Gongbi flowers and birds; It also uses simple ink instead of bright colors, showing a light and elegant taste. The flowers and birds on the picture are interspersed with nature, and there is no far-fetched patchwork. In the meantime, it is dotted with bees, mosquitoes, dragonflies, butterflies, swimming fish, frogs and the like, which seems to be full of business. This painting breaks through the time and space limitations of traditional flower and bird painting, presenting a new look, and its techniques have had a certain influence on Qian Xuan, Wang Yuan, Zhao Zhen and later literati ink and flowers in the Yuan Dynasty.
It is known that the earliest surviving work of female painters in mainland China, the "Hundred Flowers Picture Scroll" created by Yang Jieyu, a female painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, is also a fine flower painting. Jieyu is actually a title for the official position of a woman in the palace, and her real name is now impossible to verify, and some experts believe that Yang Jieyu is the sister of Empress Yang of Ning Zonggong Sheng. The Hundred Flowers Scroll is a long scroll framed with 17 small paintings, and the frontispiece is inscribed "Birthday poem of the Imperial Middle Temple, April 8", revealing that it is an "exclusive custom" of the royal family. The nave is the queen, and archaeological experts have speculated that this painting is a birthday gift to Empress Xie Daoqing of Rijong based on "April 8", so it is not difficult to understand that the painting is quite particular about the choice of flowers: longevity flowers, periwinkles, lotuses, Shih Tzu lotus, orchids, and machals...... Some are beautiful, some are auspicious, and some symbolize harmony, all for the purpose of celebrating longevity. Although the picture of each small work is not large, it pays attention to realism, delicacy and vividness, and expresses the "work" of the Southern Song Dynasty Painting Academy to the fullest.
In addition, this picture of a hundred flowers also has a unique feature - there are a total of 15 poems and 4 individual verses in the painting, "the color is not old for four years, and the scenery of Penglai belongs to the fairy family", "the jade face is not old and the spring is long, and the years are drunk before the flowers", the calligraphy is beautiful and fair, a poem with a flower, and every sentence is suitable for the occasion. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Zhiyuan, the king of the three cities, had an inscription: "Today, on the occasion of the Thousand Autumn Festival of Her Royal Highness Concubine Tang Xian, I dedicate it to wish the boundless longevity." The Hundred Flowers Picture was also presented as a birthday gift to the princess of Tang Cheng Wang Zhu Milian, and became a "double longevity work" with double auspiciousness.
Zhou Zhimian, who was active in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, specialized in flower and bird painting, and it is rumored that he raised birds at home in order to get their charm and form in the paintings; The flowers in his pen are the strengths of Chen Chun and Lu Zhi, and the colors are bright, making them a family of their own. Zhou Zhimian and his contemporaries of Suzhou painters created the "Hook Flower Point Leaf School", the so-called "Hook Flower Point Leaf", also known as "Hook (Hook) Flower Clip Leaf", is the image summary of Zhou Zhimian artistic style by later painting and calligraphy critics - to outline the shape of the flower with a fine ink line, and to paint the details with fine brushwork, and to paint the flowers and leaves with a Yi brush, so that it is rich and vivid. As one of the representative works, "Hundred Flowers" has a sophisticated and concise painting style, which fully demonstrates the painter's superb painting skills and sketching skills.
This "Hundred Flowers" depicts nearly 70 kinds of folded flowers, such as orchids, plum blossoms, Xinyi flowers, peach blossoms, pear blossoms, magnolias, and hydrangeas. There is no similarity in the mood, color and charm of each flower, all kinds of flowers are brightly colored, and the layout between them is sparse, as if they have just been picked from the branches, and their vivid and attractive charm is fully grasped and expressed by the author. Even for the same kind of flower, the author will use different expressions, make differences in color and posture, so that they compete with each other and have their own charm.
The last handscroll of "Hundred Flowers" to be introduced is from Yun Shouping, one of the "Six Masters of the Early Qing Dynasty". Yun Shouping's poetry, calligraphy and painting achievements are remarkable, especially long in boneless flowers, claiming to learn the Northern Song Dynasty Xu Chonghei method, attaching importance to sketching, bright and clean colors, the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty flowers have "the rise and fall of the merit", is respected as "sketching decent", influence throughout the north and south of the river.
In this "Hundred Flowers", Yun Shouping's original "boneless method" is adopted, which directly paints in color instead of using ink brushes, breaking the method of hooking flowers and dotting leaves used by the previous generation, and producing a new style of the times. From the point of view of painting style, this "Hundred Flowers" should belong to the painter's early works, the painting style is delicate, the brush is clean, soft and rigid, and the show is wrapped in iron, and his later years are mainly dotted dyeing, supplemented by hook dyeing and increasingly mature style. For Yun Shouping's painting habits, it is recorded in the "Ouxiang Pavilion Collection": "Every time you paint a flower, you must fold it into a vase of flower arrangement, and try your best to describe it, and you will get its fragrance and vivid color." Therefore, the flowers in the "Hundred Flowers" are also like the first picks in the garden, elegant and beautiful, vivid and colorful, which makes people look like wandering in the sea of flowers.
Yun Shouping said in his painting treatise "Nantian Painting": "The pen and ink are ruthless, and the person who moves the brush and ink must not be ruthless." Painting is in the mood, and the connoisseur should not be unemotional. "We are now looking at these flowers with their own characteristics and styles, and it is in the diverse forms of flowers and plants that we can feel the feelings of the painters and understand the charm of life.
(Author: Zhang Yumei, Xu Xinyi)
Source: Guangming Daily