On the basis of the five dynasties of the Sui and Tang dynasties, Cai Jingba's landscape painting in the Northern Song Dynasty reached its peak and gave birth to many outstanding landscape painting masters. The three great masters of the Northern Song Dynasty, namely Li Cheng, Fan Kuan and Wang Ximeng, were the most outstanding landscape painters of the Northern Song Dynasty.
They inherited the painting skills of the five generations of Jing, Guan, Dong, and Ju Si, as well as Li Sixun and Li Daozhao in the Tang Dynasty, and adopted far-reaching and lofty panoramic compositions, skillfully used various dyeing techniques, further improved the painting techniques, pushed the grand momentum of Chinese landscape painting to an unprecedented height, and achieved unprecedented artistic achievements.
Guo Ruoxu, a famous connoisseur of painting and calligraphy and a critic of painting history in the Song Dynasty, praised it as "the standard of a hundred generations" in his "Pictures and Stories".
Li Cheng, whose name is Xianxi, is a famous painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, born in a royal family, and his name as a talented man has been passed down to the world. He is fond of landscapes, and his brush and ink have made great progress, and he is known as the first person to paint landscapes.
However, Li Cheng has an arrogant personality, is not afraid of the powerful, and does not easily paint for the bureaucrats and wealthy businessmen. He lived an uninhibited life, often drank until late at night, and finally died drunk in the Chenzhou guest house at the age of forty-eight, leaving many unfinished works, which is regrettable.
Li Cheng's "Cold Forest Plains" in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei shows his unique landscape painting art. On the basis of the art of Jing Hao and Guan Tong, Li Cheng further explored and innovated, and created an original image of the cold forest in Pingyuan, which successfully expressed the beauty and changes of natural landscapes in the rainy weather.
His painting style is concise, his brushwork is sharp, and he paints with light ink, creating a unique "cirrus clouds" technique, giving people the feeling of "light ink is like a dream in the fog, and the stone is like a cloud".
This kind of expression technique of "stone like clouds" has become an important style mark of Li Cheng's brushwork, and is known as "the weather is sparse, the smoke forest is clear, the ink method is slight, and the system of camp hills is also".
Li Cheng's artistic achievements have undoubtedly added a unique charm to the art of Chinese landscape painting.
Li Cheng's "Picture of Qingluan Xiao Temple": Li Cheng, a master of landscape painting in the Northern Song Dynasty in the collection of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in the United States, has had a profound influence on the art world, and many painters have learned from him, such as Xu Daoning, Li Zongcheng, Zhai Yuanshen, Guo Xi, Wang Xu, Yan Wengui, etc.
Liu Daool of the Northern Song Dynasty praised him in the "Commentary on Famous Paintings of the Holy Dynasty" for "sweeping a thousand miles and writing a thousand miles", which shows his high artistic attainments. However, Li Cheng's genuine handwriting in the Northern Song Dynasty has been very rare, there are many imitation fakes on the market, even Mi Fu such a master has only seen two genuine pieces, and even put forward the "no Li theory" statement.
At present, there is still controversy about whether the works that have been handed down, such as "Reading the Tablet and the Stone Map", "The Cold Forest Plain", "The Picture of the Qingluan Xiao Temple", and "The Picture of the Distant Xiu of the Forest", are genuine.
Fan Kuan, a famous painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, is a native of Huayuan, Shaanxi. He had a bold temperament, liked to drink and pursue Taoist ideas, and was good at landscape painting. At the beginning, he studied under Jing Hao and Li Cheng, and later realized that "it is better to learn from nature than to learn from people", so he lived in seclusion in Zhongnan and Taihua, observing the subtle changes of clouds and smoke and wind and moon and gloom every day, as a source of painting, truly grasping the momentum of mountains and rivers and the desolate scenery of old trees, and vividly expressing them in his brush.
Therefore, he finally formed his own unique style of painting and became a master of the Northern School of Painting during the formative period of landscape painting. Zhao Mengfu, a great calligrapher and painter of the Yuan Dynasty, praised Fan Kuan's paintings as "ancient and modern masterpieces", and Dong Qichang, a great painter of the Ming Dynasty, praised Fan Kuan as "the first Song painting".
The majestic shore of the mountain and the majestic spirit are all in Fan Kuan's "Traveling Map of Streams and Mountains". Inheriting the tradition of Jing Hao, the painting adopts a panoramic and lofty composition, and successfully shows the characteristics of the mountains and majestic mountains in the northern Guanshan region.
The mountains in the painting stand majestically and have a overwhelming momentum. The top of the mountain is densely forested, and large boulders stand at the water's edge, and the houses are stained with ink. The peaks and peaks are majestic and precipitous, and the mountains and rocks are strong and hard, and the morphology and texture of the rocks are drawn with short and powerful brushstrokes.
Fan Kuan's standard method is called"Raindrops", the pen is strong and vigorous, leaving a deep impression. He makes good use of the ink accumulation method, and uses a dark and heavy ink rhyme to create"Such as walking in the night mountain"The melancholy effect sets off the steepness and toughness of the mountain.
His works are majestic and reckless, and they are known for"Painting mountains and bones is more soulful"。Although Mi Fu thinks his ink is too thick,"There is no distinction between soil and stone"But it is precisely Fan Kuan's unique style that makes his works more profound and powerful. "
The two masters, Li Cheng and Fan Kuan, established completely different styles in the landscape painting world in the early Song Dynasty, and made significant contributions to the painting world at that time, becoming the most influential masters.
In the late Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Shu compared the works of the two masters, comparing Li Cheng's sparse smoke forest and sparse atmosphere to Fan Kuan's majestic and magnificent, thick and moist landscape image"One article and one martial arts", creating a striking contrast.
Liu Daool commented on the painting style of the two masters in the "Commentary on the Famous Paintings of the Holy Dynasty" and believed"Li Chengzhi's pen is as short-sighted as a thousand miles away, and Fan Kuan's pen is far away from the seat, all of which are made by gods"。
Fifty-eight works of Fan Kuan are recorded in the Xuanhe Painting Spectrum, but there are not many authentic works of Fan Kuan, only a few fine works such as "Traveling in the Mountains and Streams", "Snow Scene and Cold Forest" and "Xiao Temple in the Snow Mountains".
Wang Ximeng, a talented painting boy in the late Northern Song Dynasty, is known as the first person to "Thousands of Miles of Rivers and Mountains". At the age of ten, he entered the "painting" study in the palace, but at first he did not achieve much.
However, under the guidance of Zhao Ji of Song Huizong, he was personally taught by the emperor, and his skills greatly increased, and he eventually transcended the boundaries of traditional painting methods.
Wang Ximeng, an eighteen-year-old genius painter, spent half a year creating the famous "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". The painting was greatly appreciated by Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty and given to Cai Jing, who was close to him.
Since then, however, news of Wang Ximeng has disappeared, and it has been speculated that he may have died shortly after the painting was completed. At present, the only record of this painting is an inscription by Cai Jing.
A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains is the only masterpiece of the genius painter Wang Ximeng, whose painting method inherits and develops the traditional green landscape painting method of Li Sixun and his son in the Tang Dynasty.
In the picture, thousands of mountains and ravines compete with each other, the rivers are staggered, the smoke and waves are vast, and the whole momentum is majestic and magnificent, which is breathtaking.
Wang Ximeng's "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" (part 4) is delicate and nuanced, with pavilions, pavilions, thatched cottages, watermill bridges and other buildings scattered in mountains, slopes and waters, vividly depicting natural scenes such as fishing, sailing, traveling, and flying birds.
The picture is complex and changeable, the weather is thousands, the composition is sparse and dense, it has a strong vitality and coherence, the technique of combining the combination of draping linen and axe splitting is used to express the texture and light and dark changes of the mountain stone, the color is uniform and clear, and the ochre color is skillfully used in the middle of the green and green, so that the picture is layered and distinct, rich in variety, and the color is bright and dazzling, like the light of the gemstone.
Part 5 of Wang Ximeng's "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" shows a majestic and magnificent artistic conception, and fully demonstrates the beauty and magnificence of natural landscapes through magnificent pictures. At that time, people were amazed by his paintings, saying, "No failure is a painting at all, whether it is distant mountains and near waters, mountain villages and wild cities, fishing boats, passenger boats, bridges and waterwheels, or birds flying in the sky, as small as ants, all of them are meticulously carved and delicate." ”
The figures are drawn vividly, like ants, vividly showing their life and labor. Wang Ximeng adopts the composition rules of far-reaching, lofty, and flat-reaching, and takes the scene from different angles to show the magnificent scenery of thousands of miles of rivers and mountains.
A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" Part 6 is a work inscribed by Cai Jing of the Song Dynasty and the monk Puguang of the Yuan Dynasty at the back of the scroll. There is no author's seal in this picture, but there are 28 square seals such as the treasure of the palace of Jixi and the treasure of the Qianlong Imperial Tour.
Liang Qing's label is titled Wang Ximeng. The works have been collected by Cai Jing and Neifu in the Song Dynasty, Puguang in the Yuan Dynasty, and Neifu in the Qing Dynasty, and recorded in books such as "Shiqu Baoji" and other books, which are known as one of the top ten famous paintings in China, and are now in the Palace Museum.
Admire part 7 of Wang Ximeng's "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", feel the delicate brushstrokes and rich colors, and appreciate the charm of ancient Chinese painting.