The Qing Dynasty Page 3
He began painting as a boy. He was perfectly in step with the spirit of his age when he turned his attention to theories on the origins of the painting and the best method to obtain what all Chinese writers agreed was the aim of painting, i.e. to penetrate the reality of nature and express the artist’s communion in terms of brush and ink.
Quoting from his essays, he puts forward:
- Initially, there was no method, but the technique was based on a single stroke, which is the root of all representation.
- Only when a painter comprehends the fundamental principle of the single stroke concerning nature can he develop the correct method for painting all representations.
- Paintings are valuable for variations, so expressing individuality is essential. Knowledge obtained from ancient masters is valuable only as an instrument.
- To be a great master, natural gifts come before knowledge. He will not understand the significance of a single stroke that contains all things unless he is endowed with natural gifts.
The Four Anhui Masters
The Anhui men of the late Ming and early Qing stand apart as individuals with unusual but related styles. Hong Ren, a priest recluse, died before Xiāo Yúncóng but was the latter’s pupil. The student became more famous than the master though both are worthy of our attention.
The illustrated ‘Seasonal Landscape’, an Album painting by Xiāo Yúncóng, exemplifies his later style. It is thinner and more delicate than some of his early work. This is partly because it is an album painting but also because of the intervention of the pure and cold style of the dead pupil Hong Ren.
Hong Ren does to Xiāo’s style what Zhào Mèngfǔ did to Lǐ Chéng’s. He deletes the colour and flesh and leaves only the bare bones. Hong Ren was also an ardent admirer of Ni Zan, and the sizeable hanging scroll ‘The Coming of Autumn’ is even more, a tribute to his spiritual godfather Ni than it is to Xiao.
These two masters, Zha Shibiao and Méi Qīng have become known as ‘The Four Masters of An- hui’. Zha Shibiao uses his abbreviating and free flowing brush to produce scenes with an immediate impact of great physical charm, often in an almost complete watercolour technique.
Méi Qīng was engrossed in the Yellow Mountains of his native land. Most of his albums are constructs of scenes from this range executed ‘in styles of’ various earlier painters. He is at his best in more complex organizations, where the rolling rococo movement of the landscape overrides his brush.
As found in Wu Li and others, the common idea of metamorphosis is found here too. For Méi Qīng, the landscape is reduced to small rhythmical motifs and repetitions: trees are like flowers, mountains like rocks etc. His work is similar to Shí Tāo but lacks the consistent inventions of the earlier master.
The Eighteenth Century Individualists
During the eighteenth Century, there were only a few individualists of intrinsic worth, most of which were from Yangzhou. Hua Yan was a stunning Artist who painted in the same spirit as Du Jin of the fifteenth Century.Yan’s work is within the tradition of the Yangzhou school and is often named one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.
Jin Nong was a priest, a highly serious artist who painted in a free sketch style; his home was Hangzhow.
Huang Sheng painted similarly to some of the ‘Che School’ masters. His fluttering brushwork is usually used for figure painting, but in the landscapes, he gives it even freer rein, so the rocks’ outlines and wrinkles seem to dance in a syncopated way.
His exaggeration and humour puzzled his fellow citizens, who thought him too extravagant and lacking refined beauty and harmonious ease.
