Yun Shouping (1633-1690), formerly known as Ge, Zi Shouping, later with character lines, more character Zheng Shu, nantian, alias Dongyuan grass clothes, Southern Kingdom Yumin, snow-clad residents, Ouxiang Sanren, Yunxi Foreign History, Gourd Angler, etc., famous painters of the Qing Dynasty. Yun Shouping was a famous painter in the early Qing Dynasty, one of the "Six Greats" in the early Qing Dynasty painting world, and was collectively known as the "Four Kings Wu Yun" together with Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Yi, Wang Yuanqi and Wu Li.
Yun Shouping is the main representative of the Changzhou school of painting, Yun Shouping's flowers, real and vivid and full of fun in life, he went to other places to sketch, the shape, demeanor, color rhyme of flowers have a unique introduction, Yun Shouping's boneless flowers created a new situation in flower painting in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, modern and modern well-known painters Ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo, Liu Haisu and so on have copied and studied his paintings.
Boneless is a technique used in traditional Chinese flower and bird painting. Different from the brushwork and freehand, the boneless "no" word is submerged and implicit, emphasizing that the picture is not outlined by ink lines, but directly painted with color or ink. The boneless painting method flourished in the five generations, and Guo Ruoxuan's "Pictorial Insights" records that this painting method began in the five generations of Xu Xi and Xu Chongsi's grandchildren. Xu Chongsi's flower and bird paintings create a new form of boneless method on the basis of inheriting and developing traditions. Yun Shouping carried forward the boneless painting method on the basis of inheriting and understanding Xu Chongsi's flower and bird paintings.
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.
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.
Yun Shouping has accomplished poetry, books and paintings, and has the reputation of "Nantian Three Absolutes". From the perspective of calligraphy, Yun Shouping started from the calligraphy in the early days, and then devoted himself to the practice of kai and grass, and learned many things to achieve self-achievement, and at that time, he was also unique in the book world. He referred to the handwriting of his predecessors, and conducted in-depth research on the inkblots of Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, Mi Fu and Chu Suiliang, and also taught Yan Zhenqing, Zhao Mengfu and other calligraphers to form a unique style of thickness, boldness, elegance and handsomeness.
Yun Shouping took a step from landscape painting to specialize in flower and bird painting, which can show that the Changzhou school represented by Yun Shouping is the rise of the flower and bird painting school, but his contribution to the continuation of the landscape painting school has also been fully affirmed by the painting world.
If Yun Shouping's aesthetic ideas are compared to a blind delicacy, its "light" and "taste" feeling, subsequent art practitioners should also carefully taste it, in order to understand the infinite mysteries in Yun Shouping's aesthetic thought.