Li Song: Appreciation of works by Painters of the Song Dynasty

Biography Li Song (1166–1243), a native of Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou), Song Dynasty. Born into poverty, he worked as a carpenter in his youth. Good painting, quite far rope ink. He was adopted as an adopted son by the court painter Li Congxun, taught painting skills, and eventually became a generation of famous artists. The painting academy of the Three Dynasties (1190-1264) of Song Guangzong, Song Ningzong and Song Lizong was to be edicted, and he was respected as the "Old Painter of the Three Dynasties". Gonghua characters are explained, and they have to be trained from the will, especially in boundary painting. The figure paintings are meticulous and energetic; the paintings of flowers and birds are exquisite and rigorous, and they do not feel cumbersome and sluggish; landscape paintings are operated by craftsmen, leaving the image outside, fascinating; boundary paintings do not use boundary rulers, and the rules of the palaces and pavilions are prepared with rope and ink, which is extraordinary. The subject matter of painting is rich and colorful, from the court to the folk, from the city to the countryside, from production to life, from eating and drinking to entertainment, from the Xianshan to the Dragon Palace, from history to reality, which are reflected in the paintings, to reflect the rural terroir and peasant life. For example, Ming Emperor Fighting Diagram and Flower Basket Diagram; there are custom paintings with white depictions and pale colors, such as Cargo Lang Diagram; there are also landscape paintings rendered with ink, such as West Lake Diagram and so on. His works include Jiading's four-year (1211) volume of "Cargo Lang Tu", "Flower Basket Diagram" page, "Skeleton Illusion Diagram" scroll hidden in the National Palace Museum; "West Lake Map" scroll in the Shanghai Museum; "Listening to Ruan Tu", "Night Moon Looking at the Lake Map", and Li Song's landscape sketch painting "Water Temple ZhaoLiang Map" and other collections in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. His works also include "Chunxi Crossing Bull Map", "Futian Map", "Lotus Picking Map" and "Guan Tide Map", etc., and the posterity of the subject matter of the painter titled his painting: "Li Shi is the most knowledgeable about the interest of the peasant family". Li Song's genre paintings are more well-known, he has painted many rural life customs paintings that express the life of the lower class, depicting the lives of working people as aesthetic objects, which has important significance in the history of the development of ancient Chinese art. There are many surviving books in his "Cargo Lang Tu", the best of which is a volume collected by the Palace Museum. This painting depicts a freight man surrounded by children in the countryside, full of strong local atmosphere. Hidden in the "Skeleton Illusion" axis hidden in the Palace Museum, the characters have very good expressions, the clothes are wrinkled and rat-tailed, mostly straight lines, thin and powerful.

【Name】Song Li Song Listen to Ruan Tu 【Era】 Song Dynasty 【Introduction】Color painting on silk, 104.5 cm horizontal and 177.5 cm vertical. National Palace Museum in Taipei. It is said to have been painted by Li Song (a native of Qiantang, Zhejiang) in the Song Dynasty. In this garden, the tall woods and strange stones, the branches and leaves cover the lushness, and the corporal of the tree sits idly on the bed, with his left leg crossed, listening to the music of the Nguyen and enjoying the antiques. Next to her are beautiful ladies, burning incense, picking flowers, and holding fans. The lines of the figures are smooth, and the painting method is similar to that of the Ming Dynasty painters Du Mao and Tang Yin. The bed surface is a rattan soft drawer, breathable for use in the summer; the bed is placed with a straight-up brain-to-head chair-type recliner, no legs and feet, and an adjustable activity bracket for the back to rely on when sitting, which is generally suitable for use on the bed or on the mat. The square incense in front of the bed has a corset waist, straight legs, and a ruyi foot underneath. This square is shaped in a group with a bed to hold the incense burner.

【Name】Song Li Song Skeleton illusion 【Introduction】Color on silk, length 27 cm, width 26.3 cm. Collection of the Palace Museum. On the left side of this figure, there is a large skeleton, wearing a skull, dressed in a colorful robe, and carrying another small skeleton to play the game. There was a woman next to her, bare breasts, feeding her toddlers. A small child on the other side, hands and feet on the ground, head up and hips. After the child, another woman made a gesture of reaching out. Piers, cargo, small bamboo contrast. Some scholars believe that the core theme of this painting should be the transformation of life and death and its causal cycle, or related to Zhuangzi's saying of "qi life and death", whether this is the case, it remains to be examined. In the picture, the pen is tough and solid, the clothes are fine and fluent, and the depiction of utensils, muscles and bones is unique. The color is exquisite and elegant, which is quite characteristic of the southern Song Dynasty courtyard body painting. On the left side of the picture, there is the word "Li Song", and on the opposite canvas there are Mao Xuanzhen Shuyuan Huang Gongwang sentences, and the plutonium "Xin Gong Treasure Reward" and "Huihou Treasure Collection" are printed in many ways. Once collected by Geng Zhaozhong, a Qing dynasty, there is no bibliography.

【Name】Song Li Song Cargo Lang Tu 【Introduction】Picture scroll, silk, color painting, length: 25.5cm, horizontal: 70.4cm. It is now in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This section is signed: "Jiading Xin Wei Li Congshun Male Song Painting." There is also a poem of seven words inscribed by the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. This is a picture of the customs of the characters, the picture of the cargo man shouldering the burden of groceries, overwhelmed and bent over, cheering children running to tell each other, joy overflowing with words. The loads are plentiful and varied, from pots and pans to children's toys to melons and pastries. In the Southern Song Dynasty, when the circulation of goods was not yet developed enough, the freight men walked the streets and alleys, a pair of goods was a small department store, the freight men not only brought the goods needed for the remote countryside, but also brought a variety of novel insights, the arrival of the goods lang was often as lively as a festival, Li Song depicted such a scene in the picture. With the help of the theme of cargo lang, the painter expressed a side of the life of the Southern Song Dynasty, and those dazzling objects, although many of them are no longer known for their purpose today, truly record the way of life of the people of the Southern Song Dynasty, which is a rare and precious historical material for folklorists. The shaping of the characters in the picture mainly relies on line drawing, and the delicate strokes are supplemented by light colors, making the picture simple and calm. The dynamics of the characters are distinct, and none of them are similar, showing the painter's realistic skills. The meticulous depiction of the complicated and chaotic goods shows Li Song's "Youchangjie painting" technique. Bibliography of "Shiqu Baodi · Preliminary Compilation".

【Name】Song Li Song Flower Basket Diagram 【Introduction】Color on silk, length 19.1 cm, width 26.5 cm. Collection of the Palace Museum. In this Chinese painting brush realistic style of "Flower Basket Diagram", the bamboo basket is exquisitely woven, which is filled with various flowers, including okra, gardenia, lilies, magnolias, pomegranates, etc. The small flower basket reflects the beauty, diversity, vigor and vitality of the blossoming nature, which makes people feel very kind after watching it, and the painter's love and concern for nature and life are also on the silk. Although the frame is not large, the depiction is delicate and concrete, the lines are expressive, the color is bright and elegant, and the composition is stable and full. It is a masterpiece in the heavy color painting of the gongbi. The lower left of the picture is signed: "Li Song Painting" three words, and the bottom of the picture is a half-print of "Xiangzi Jingjia collection".

【Name】Song Li Song West Lake Picture Scroll 【Introduction】Ink and pencil on paper, 26.7 cm in length and 85 cm in width, shanghai museum collection. The whole picture adopts the form of bird's eye view composition, the center of the painting is blank, for the West Lake lake, the mountains above the lake are undulating, the north and south peaks are facing each other, and the six bridges of Su Causeway are looming. The whole picture is used with both freehand and brush, the ink color is light and washed, and the pen is sophisticated. At the beginning of the volume, there are four words in the Ming Shen Zhou Book "Lake and Mountain Good Fun". The "West Lake Picture Scroll" is a Chinese painting work by the Chinese Song Dynasty painter Li Song, this West Lake picture is not necessarily the most exquisite picture scroll depicting the West Lake since ancient times, but it is the work that best illustrates the whole picture of the ancient West Lake. Although gong pen painting is not as good as ink freehand, as a human flesh camera, Li Song has done it. As you can see in the picture, the West Lake more than 800 years ago, except for the lack of the Lake Pavilion and the Three Pools Of The Moon, is basically the same. According to The Fifth Volume of Li Yan's "Southern Song Dynasty Painting Catalogue", Zhu Yuanzhang once wrote an inscription on this "West Lake Map" and praised it, as a Taizu Emperor who had not received compulsory education and relied on self-study to get rid of blindness, he was usually very interesting, and rarely engaged in literature and art in takeaway, and this seemed to be the only direct comment on painting works that people knew Zhu Yuanzhang.