Yun Shouping: The "boneless painting" grandmaster who is in the second seat

In the early Qing Dynasty painting world, there was such a legendary person - born in the family of officials and eunuchs at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Shuxiang Mendi, because he swore not to submit to the Qing court, he went to war with his father and brother to fight against the Qing Dynasty at a young age, although unfortunately he was captured but adopted by the Governor of the Qing Army as an adopted son, and a few years later, he met his lost father, immersed himself in the study of calligraphy and painting and finally became a sect of masters, was respected as "a decent school of sketching", and had "the merit of rising and falling" in the early Qing Dynasty flower and bird paintings. Together with Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Yuanqi, Wang Yi and Wu Li, he was called the "Six Greats of the Early Qing Dynasty" or the "Four Kings of Wu Yun". He is Yun Shouping, also known as Yun Nantian.

The "Ouxiang Chuan Yiyun - Exhibition of Works of Changzhou School Painters collected by the National Art Museum of China and Nanjing Museum" is being exhibited at the National Art Museum of China, bringing 80 masterpieces (sets) of the "Changzhou School" including Yun Shouping's "Flower Atlas" and "Residual Lotus Reed Sketches".

Founded in the mid-to-late 17th century during the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the "Changzhou School" is one of the most influential schools of painting in the history of Chinese Ming and Qing painting. Because its founder and leader is Yun Shouping (号南田), it is also known as the "Yun Sect" or "Nantian Sect".

Throughout his life, Yun Shouping never forgot the pain of the destruction of the country and his family, he "had a bright heart and did not think about the examination", but he was forced to make a living, and finally made a living by painting. From the existing information, Yun Shouping's cousin Yun Benchu (号香山) may have been the initiation teacher who first taught him painting, so there is a saying that "Yun's painting began with Mr. Xiangshan". Yun Shouping was highly knowledgeable and focused his artistic quest on Xu Chongsi's "boneless" flower method in the Northern Song Dynasty. Because Xu Chongsi is passed down from his grandfather Xu Xi, it can also be said that Yun Shouping was derived from Xu Xi, who opened the "wild yi" painting style in the fifth generation. The basic method is "point dyeing chalk with grease, and after the point is repeated to dye the pen foot", the picture presents the fusion of water, color and ink without marks, bright and transparent, elegant and warm. At the beginning of its establishment, "Boneless" flower painting had the original intention of adapting to market demand, but it can innovate in color and sentiment, and accurately grasp the problems of "elegance" and "custom".

Yun Shouping's flowers are different from the freehand style of Chen Chun and Xu Wei in the Ming Dynasty, and are also far away from the Eight Mountain People and Shi Tao in the early Qing Dynasty. At the same time, he was able to get rid of the shackles of the rigorous brush strokes of the previous generations of courtyards, and avoid the influence of the popular "Wumen Painting School" painting method of painting flowers and leaves. Look closely at the silk coloring work "Purple Cloud Pearl Tent" in this exhibition: painting a wild vine, the branches and leaves are draped down, the grapes and leaves in between, some of the edges are directly formed by the condensation of the water traces to form a natural outline, some rely on the color and hue to reflect the natural illusion of the texture like the ceramic kiln change, the whole work is flexible with the pen, and the gentle atmosphere is revealed in the freshness. Another paper color, "Residual Lotus Reed Sketch", is tall and tall, and the fragrance is overflowing. Among them, the residual lotus painting method absorbs the "Mijia Point Method" created by the Northern Song Dynasty, and the orderly points meet the dots, blending between water and color, and the thickness and lightness are harmonious and charming.

Yun Shouping had always admired Wang Shimin and Wang Jian's painting style of the "Four Kings" in the early Qing Dynasty, and later had close contacts with Wang Yi, the leader of the "Yushan Sect", and these exchanges helped Yun Shouping to make great progress in art. Wang Yi can be said to be friends with Yun Shouping. The two often discussed painting theory together, exchanged painting skills, and influenced each other in painting. Many of Wang Yi's extant works have left Yun Shouping's inscriptions. There has always been such a saying: Yun Nantian first learned landscapes, but after he got to know Wang Yi, he thought that no matter how hard he tried in the future, he would not be able to surpass the latter in landscape painting, so he was "ashamed to be the second in the world" he mainly attacked flowers and birds, and finally compared the people who painted flowers in the world and became the first.

However, judging from the works that yun Shouping has passed down to the world, there are still many landscape paintings. In this exhibition, there is a silk ink painting "Imitation of Dongyuan Xishan Endless Map", which shows Yun Shouping's skill. The reason why he chose to focus on flowers and birds has many considerations: one is not to compete with friends and "make" space for their own development; second, combined with his own personality and temperament characteristics, choose flowers and birds to have a better grasp of success; third, out of his own consideration of selling paintings for a living, flowers and birds are more likely to be loved by ordinary people, and landscape is the preference of literati.

Once the direction was chosen, Yun Shouping was distracted and single-mindedly managed his "boneless" flowers and birds. The characteristic of "no bone" is that it does not use ink lines to outline, but directly depicts objects in color. Yun Shouping inherited and carried forward Xu Chongsi's "boneless" flowers, and used this as a breakthrough to inject fresh and fresh breath into the painting world of the early Qing Dynasty. Carefully observing Yun Shouping's "boneless" flower works, it is not difficult to find that his use of water has reached the point of pure fire. He is good at using the "water collision method", so that water and color are integrated with each other, leaving no trace; and through the brush to absorb the amount of water, to adjust the brightness of the color change, with the help of layers of blending, so that the picture produces rich layers, to achieve a bright and transparent and warm visual effect. The most amazing trick is to mix ink with water, and after adding a lot of water, you get clear ink, and the clear ink shows a smoke-like background like fog. Yun Shouping advocates "light and not frivolous, heavy and not depressed" in color design. He believes that the ultimate of color is to make "light and elegant" return to "elegance" and agility.

Although Yun Shouping mainly attacked "boneless" flowers after middle age, he did not interrupt the creation of landscape paintings, and from the age of more than 20 until his death, there have been fine landscapes passed down. His landscape took the southern landscape style represented by Dong Yuan and Ju Ran, and the later master "Yuan Sijia", Gao Kegong, Zhao Mengfu and the Ming Dynasty's Wang Fu, Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Dong Qichang and others, while absorbing the advantages of the northern school of landscape, formed their own landscape painting style. His landscape paintings focus on the combination of simplicity and complexity, virtual reality, alternating the use of light ink and wet pen to create a quiet and elegant realm, expressing the true feelings of landscapes. Yun Nantian's landscape paintings were deeply rooted in the Yuan Dynasty's Huang Gongwang and Wang Meng's cold and humorous, and later took Shi Min and Wang Jian, the kings of the "Four Kings", as models, and repeatedly exchanged skills with Wang Yi and Wang Yuanqi, so that his landscape paintings were laid-back, dry and moist, light and strange, and had their own pattern, and there were places where the "Four Kings" had not yet arrived.

Looking at Yun Shouping's surviving works, he has achieved high artistic achievements in both landscapes and flowers and birds, and he has walked alone in the painting world at that time with "boneless" flowers. His painting style swept through the entire painting world in the early Qing Dynasty, attracting a large number of disciples, clans and later scholars. Ma Yuanyi, Jiang Tingxi, Qian Weicheng, etc. are all followers. Among them, Ma Yuanyu's achievements are the highest. He can change into something new and form his own face. The descendants of the clan who inherited the mantle of Yun Nantian are also full of talents, especially the granddaughter Yun Bing, who expresses the femininity of flowers with a unique perspective and technique of women, and the paper color "Flower and Bird Chart Axis" in the exhibition is quite representative.

It should be pointed out that the "Changzhou School" is not only painting, but also calligraphy and poetry. Yun Shouping's main paintings are all poetry, books and paintings as a harmonious and organic whole, inseparable, and were then known as the "three absolutes", and then became the unique feature of the "Changzhou School". His elegant and popular painting style has had a profound impact on the "Yangzhou School", "Lingnan School" and even the "Maritime School" in later generations. (Wang Jiannan)