The sea pig in the "Different Fish Diagram", that is, the dolphin
dolphin
Qing Dynasty painter Zhao Zhiqian's "Different Fish Diagram" was painted in Wenzhou in the eleventh year of Xianfeng (1861), and the painting depicted strangely shaped marine creatures: Sha Qi, Zhang Zhi, JinLu, Sea Pig, Sword Shark, Ghost Crab, Tiger Crab, Horse WhipFish, Qin Shrimp, Hu Hu, Dice Fish, Yan Stingray, Stone Fly and fifteen other species, he wrote: "Xianfeng Xin You, Shu Ke Dong Ou, see the sea creatures have strange shapes, miscellaneous pictures of this paper, intermittent for examination, convey the god Ah Tu, the meaning of Si Hu. In this year, Zhao Zhiqian was thirty-two years old and came to Wenzhou to avoid the war of the Taiping Army, while seeking a job to support his family.
Wenzhou is near the sea, the sea of products to Zhao Zhiqian brought a new and different experience, after eating, but also sighed the wonder of creation, inspired by this, there is a "different fish map". The seafood in "Different Fish Map" is wanton and has a vigorous vitality. Zhao Zhiqian's friend Hu Shu said in the inscription of "Different Fish Map": "The picture of different fish is not good and different, he fish does not wait for the picture", as Si said, in this long scroll of more than two meters, the most eye-catching of which is the half-pig and half-fish sea pig, that is, the dolphin. Zhao Zhiqian wrote: "The natives called them sea pigs, the fish were on their heads, the small ones were hundreds of pounds, the meat was inedible, and they thought that the oil was lit, and the flies did not dare to come near." "The meaning of pigs and dolphins is pigs, Zhao Zhiqian obviously did not see it in person, so he drew the shape of a pig, the head of the fish is fat, big ears and long nose, exactly the same as the pig, the lower body is a fish tail, and said to use its oil to light the lamp, the fly does not dare to come closer.
The swallow stingray in "Alien Fish Figure"
Swallow stingray
In addition, it is worth noting the swallow stingray and the sword shark. Yan Stingray is a kind of stingray, "fifty or sixty species of stingray, this is the most strange", Zhao Zhiqian painted the stingray like a bird, its shape is quite strange. The sword shark "has a long beak like a sword", or a type of serrated whale. Other sea objects dotted around these behemoths, such as the large octopus, the lyre shrimp, and the mudskipper. This kind of subject matter is extremely rare in Chinese painting. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, the painter Nie Huang painted "Sea Mistake Map", which included more than 300 kinds of marine animals, and his works were closer to specimen-style depictions, mainly based on work brushes, not as wide-open as Zhao Zhiqian.
Qing Dynasty painter Zhao Zhiqian (1829-1884)
In Zhao Zhiqian's era, people had limited knowledge, mostly false rumors, and some people said that the internal organs of dolphins were exactly the same as those of pigs, which brought a certain misleading to the painter. In other words, the dolphin's two flesh fins near the head are mistaken for pig ears, and the dolphin's long mouth, which looks like a pig's nose from a distance, can only be combined with scattered pieces of knowledge, so a strange species is created on paper. The most typical is the sea pig in "Alien Fish Diagram", the splicing of pigs and fish, and the fat and bloated body, witnessing the clumsiness and crampedness of early naturalism.
Zhang Refuse in "Alien Fish Figure"
octopus
The following is the full picture of "Different Fish Diagram", please turn your phone across to watch ——
Zhao Zhiqian's "Different Fish Diagram"