Portrait of Chen Jiru
Portrait of Dong Qichang
Portrait of Ni Zhan
"Shen Du Statue"
Ming "Images"
Portrait of the Twelve Ming Dynasties (partial) ◎ Wang Jiannan
A large exhibition quietly opened at the National Art Museum of China, which is "Like a Mirror, Wonderful Look- A Special Exhibition of Portraits of the Ming and Qing Dynasties". In the three large exhibition halls on the fifth floor of the art museum, portraits are lined up one after another, among which two sets of the top works in ancient Chinese portraits are exhibited- the twelve portraits of the Ming Dynasty and the twenty-five of Xu Zhang's "Songjiang Kunihiko Album".
Photorealism
The theme of this exhibition, "Like a Mirror Taking Pictures, Wonderful Looks", is taken from Jiang Shaoshu's evaluation of Zeng Whale's portrait painting in the Ming Dynasty. As the author of the first history of painting in the Qing Dynasty, Zhang Geng, once divided portrait painting into two major genres: "A heavy ink bone, the ink bone is completed, and then the color is applied, in order to take the old and young of the color, its spirit has long been transmitted in the ink bone, this Minzhong Zeng Bochen's learning also; a little use of light ink, outline the general meaning of the facial features, all rendered in pastel, this Jiangnan painter's transmission method." "The whales of the late Ming Dynasty fused the two painting methods and changed the rendering to baking and dyeing, making the face more realistic. According to Jiang Shaoshu's monograph "History of Silent Poetry", Zeng Whale was born in 1564 and died in 1647, living for 83 years. The painting method he created was widely known later in his career and was imitated by many followers. Soon after entering the Qing Dynasty, Zeng Whale died, but his painting method was strongly praised by later generations. In this exhibition, there is a painting of "Gu Sleepwalking Portrait" collected by the art museum, which is the work of Zeng Whale. Although it is not as wonderful as the "Portrait of Wang Shimin" and "Portrait of Zhang Ziqing" that he painted, it also represents its characteristics. Gu Mengyou was a poet in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, who lived a life of heroism and righteousness, and did not serve after entering the Qing Dynasty, and died as a widow. Zeng Whale depicts the cheerful Gu Sleepwalk sitting on a mountain stone in a unique way, with simple and smooth lines. The landscape around him was painted by Zhang Dafeng, a famous landscape painter at the time.
According to the literature, in the late Ming Dynasty, there were many portrait halls in Nanjing and Beijing, also known as the "Fax Office", and the signboard in front of the door was written on one side of the "Xingle Xi rong" and on the other side was "Chao Yi Da xiang". Shopkeepers are generally folk painters who have been passed down from generation to generation. There are fewer people who go to the door to ask for paintings, and there are fewer people who seek to make "happy pictures", most of them are painting the remains of the dead, that is, serving the purpose of leaving a portrait for the dead, commonly known as: "painting the shadow and revealing the white". There are two large images in this exhibition, bringing together important people in a family.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it began to be influenced by Western painting, and gradually formed a painting method that used Western portrait methods. Zhang Geng's "Records of Paintings of the National Dynasty" commented: "The method of photography, the ink bones of the Whale Clan in Minzhong are positive, and Jiang Zuo passes it on." The first one who has been given for a long time, who has been exiled to laymen, has no one who can realize his work. Although the dharma of the disciples exists, those who have gained their gods are few, and those who oppose the Western school are inferior, and those who are Judean writers are easy to win. "Western missionaries came east to Middle-earth, first in Macau, then from Guangzhou to the north, first in Nanjing, and then in Beijing. Among them, the Italian Matteo Ricci is the most famous. He was sent to Macao in the tenth year of the Wanli Calendar (1582), to Zhaoqing, Guangdong province, the following year, and later to Beijing, where he presented gifts such as chime bells, octagonal organs, triangular mirrors, statues of God, and statues of our lady to the MingShen Sect. The latter was followed by the German John Tang. The court at the time recorded the oil paintings brought by the Europeans: "His paintings were stained with walnut oil and silk, either green or black, and then harvested." Do not use white ground, its color is easy to hide also. The image of God painted is made of coarse cloth, far away, and the gaze is like a note, and the near is not strange. ”
Under the impact of Western painting, the mainstream of Ming and Qing portrait painting is still the method of Zeng Whale's writing. Whether it is officials and eunuchs, celebrities, hermits, boudoir women, monks and nuns, etc., they are all scrambling to find opportunities to take pictures of themselves in such an era. Zeng Whale's method of painting focuses on baking and dyeing, which is called the method of "ink bone". Each painting is first dyed with a pale color, and then supplemented with a hook line, and the facial features are gradually revealed in up to dozens of baking dyes. This feature is best reflected in the exhibition in the "Portrait Album of Mingren" donated to the Nanjing Museum by the descendants of the Pan family, who are highly collectible in Suzhou, after 1949. These 12 portraits are important representatives of figure painting and portrait painting in the late Ming Dynasty. This album depicts the heads of 12 government officials and gentry of the Ming Dynasty. There is a middle-aged image of Li Rihua, a famous connoisseur of calligraphy and painting at that time, and Xu Wei, an important pioneer of large-scale freehand flower and bird painting. Although the author of these works is no longer known, their exquisite artistic techniques epitomize the essence of the portrait painting of the "Bochen School" (Zeng Whale, Zi Bochen).
Group photo
Another type of Ming and Qing portrait painting, not as solemn as the above works, often places the characters in scenes such as natural landscapes or artificial gardens. This is the form of "YajiTu" or "Xingle Tu", which was very popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties. It can bring a group of people into the same frame. This kind of situational collective photography is reminiscent of the outstanding Dutch portrait painter of the 17th century, Frans Hals, who was extremely good at group portraits, and the figures in the picture sat one by one around the highest-ranking person in the center, which reflected the characteristics of the West that often focused on photographic portrait painting. This is not the case in China.
Because Chinese painters sought to establish a relationship between man and nature in early landscape paintings, by the Ming Dynasty, this idea of "the unity of heaven and man" was further reflected in portrait painting, forming a unique style of portrait painting and landscape painting blending with each other. "Shen Du Chunyin Tuning Crane Diagram Small Portrait" depicts Shen Du, who was an official of the Yongle Dynasty, dressed in a big red official robe, standing leisurely and staring at a crane in front of him. This is a typical "walking music map", reflecting the mood of the scholar and doctor who is indifferent to Ming Zhi and far away from the hustle and bustle. There is also a large portrait of Shen Du's elderly official dress in the exhibition hall. Standard style, big red robe, the protagonist looks serene. Its facial depiction is both accurate and vivid, completely exceeding the level of "Walking Music Diagram".
By the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the leading court painter was Yu Zhiding. He composed a set of six portraits for his friend Qiao Lai, a native of Baoying County, Yangzhou, arranged in a row in the exhibition hall. Jole in the painting has retired home and built his own "Garden of Vertical Trees" to spend his comfortable life in a quiet environment. He engaged in different pastimes in six paintings, interspersed with a classic picture of the life of the literati of the Qing Dynasty, alluding to the free spiritual world.
Star photos
Both in terms of quantity and quality, famous courtiers and celebrities occupy an important role in Ming and Qing portrait paintings. Famous courtiers generally dressed in court clothes and sat upright in chairs, and the "Portrait of Wang Jun", "Portrait of Xu Ruke" and "Portrait of Shi Kefa" in this exhibition belong to this category. Wang Jun was famous in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, and he was a scholar of Hubu Shangshu, Wenyuange University, and Crown Prince Taifu. During his term of office, he repeatedly protected those persecuted by the eunuch Liu Jin, and finally resigned and returned to his hometown because he could not save the situation. He was praised by Wang Yangming as a "perfect man", and Tang Yin called him "the first article in the sea, and the prime minister in the mountains is unparalleled". Xu Ruke had angered Wei Zhongxian, who had monopolized power in the Wanli Dynasty, and was stripped of his citizenship and retired to his hometown, where he lived a clean and honest life. Shi Kefa was a famous general who resisted the Qing Dynasty at the end of the Ming Dynasty, insisted on refusing to surrender the city of Yangzhou, and calmly and righteously after the city was destroyed.
Portraits of famous courtiers should reflect the etiquette system and official rank, and their costumes have a unified standard and cannot be drawn arbitrarily. The portrait of a baumetro is much easier. Wang Yi, one of the members of the famous "Four Kings" landscape painting school in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, wore a black horn scarf on his head, opened his toothless mouth, and looked like an old man. The painter Liu Minghuai used the method of Zeng Whale to repeatedly dye this wrinkled face, but unfortunately lacked ability, slightly obtrusive and blunt.
Standard like
Another set of rare works was painted by Xu Zhang, a master portrait painter of the Qianlong period. His teacher Shen Shao was once a tall foot of Zeng Whale, Xu Zhang achieved "blue out of blue and better than blue", looking at his "Songjiang Kunihiko Atlas", he could not help but sigh that his skill has greatly surpassed the trend of Shizu Zeng Whale. The history of painting records that he "did not photograph only God Xiao, but the traces of pen and ink baking and dyeing were all melted, and the complementary pictures were also impressive in color, worthy of Shen Shao's senior brother".
After Xu Zhang became famous, he went to the court of Jingshi as a painter for a period of time, and soon returned to his hometown of Shanghai. He had a vision to paint portraits of many famous courtiers and celebrities who had been born and lived in the Matsue area. It was a huge project, and he finally completed it in the fifth year of Qianlong, when he was 46 years old. A total of 110 sages in the Shanghai area in the past 270 years are depicted, including 61 on paper and 39 on silk. 99 frames have been saved, for a total of 100 people.
According to Xu Zhang's inscription, he arranged different costumes and backgrounds for each character according to the identity and personality of different people, including portraits of dynastic clothes, images of civilian clothes, or standing, or sitting, or lying on their sides, without any similarity. Xu Zhang fully mobilized his subjective initiative and wrote the mood of each character. For example, Dong Qichang in the late Ming Dynasty was long ago from the middle of the Qing Dynasty in which Xu Zhang lived, and Xu Zhang could only refer to the surviving stone carvings to create statues. Dong Qichang in the painting is dressed in official clothes, full of temple posture, although he is old, he is in good spirits.
As Dong Qichang's lifelong close friend, Chen Jiru, who is also a Shanghainese, has lived a lifelong life of cloth cloth because of several failed examinations. Xu Zhang naturally drew a civilian suit for him, plus a Dongpo hat. Although this typical Jiangnan literati has shown the appearance of an old man, he is still in a spirit.
If you watch carefully, the audience can also find Ni Zhan, one of the "Four Families of the Yuan" in a group of Ming and Qing people. He is a native of Jiangsu, how could he "mix" into the ranks of Shanghainese? Read the inscription next to the painting carefully: "Mr. Ni Zhan, the number of Yunlin, the people of Wuxi, the Yuan Ji with the world is troublesome, abandoning his field house, and traveling to the world." Yu Songjiang Cao ZhiBai family is the longest. "I can't help but make people smile. It turned out that this Ni Gaoshi had been living in the home of Cao Zhibai, a Shanghainese, for a long time, and "Allah was also half a Shanghainese", so he was included in the book. Xu Zhang's painting of Ni Zhan is very cute, a happy fat old man sitting on the bed, his face rosy. So affinity, where is the legendary "cleanliness", where is it still like a lonely and arrogant person? Looking at the 25 portraits on display, what is particularly surprising is the amount of thought Xu Zhang has put into each person. He paid great attention to the unity of the face and clothing of the characters in the use of brushes, avoiding the disconnection between the face and the body when many painters painted portraits at that time.
The development history of Portrait Painting in the Ming and Qing Dynasties for more than 500 years has undergone many evolutions, and finally in the late Qing Dynasty, a "summative" figure painting master - Ren Bonian appeared. Therefore, another important point of this exhibition is his works created in different periods.
For example, the painter painted the figure painting "Portrait of Zhao Dechang and His Wife" at the age of 45. The two elderly people in the painting are Ren Bonian's maternal grandparents. This was the period when the painter's style was at its most mature. Ren Bonian attaches great importance to the relationship between the light and dark volume of the face, he uses traditional line drawing techniques to outline the grandfather's facial features, slightly pastel, and uses the painting method of Zeng Whale, dry brush rubbing combined with light ink baking, painting the grandmother's face, and her costume is depicted in "nail-headed rattails" to set off the old man's ability. Sitting behind her, her grandfather adopted a freehand brush stroke, an ink-colored fur coat, full of vitality, and at the same time, it formed a clever echo with the cloud crane ornament on the carpet.
This exhibition is selected from the collections of the National Art Museum of China and the Nanjing Museum, and if the viewer can compare with the Ming and Qing portraits exhibited at the National Museum in the first half of the year and the works in the first phase of the Palace Museum's special exhibition of ancient figure paintings, "Temple Ceremony", they can have a more comprehensive understanding of ancient Chinese figure paintings.