On the night of Chinese New Year's Eve this year, the dance "Only This Green" appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, accompanied by the sound of the ancient wind, the green mountains and green waters slowly emerged, and the dancers slowly entered the painting, as if the "mountain peaks" in the painting, the people and mountains were one, the static painting seemed to "flow", and the beauty of the dance led the audience into the Chinese aesthetic hall full of modern meaning.
"Only This Green" is based on the remaining huge volume "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" by wang Ximeng, a young painter in the late Northern Song Dynasty, and the painting is now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing.
This large silk scroll with a thousand-year history is 1191.5 centimeters long and 51.5 centimeters high, which is more than twice as long as another famous painting of the Qingming Dynasty, "Qingming On the River Map", which is the longest known Song Dynasty painting. The whole volume is re-colored in green and green, and the landscapes near and far in the painting are magnificent, including cottage markets, fishing boats and passenger boats, bridges and water wheels and forest birds, with perfect pen and ink workmanship and suitable location.
"A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" and "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty" are one of the "Top Ten Famous Paintings in China", and they are also from the Northern Song Dynasty, which is also the treasure of the Forbidden City, but it has become the two peaks of different styles of painting in the Northern Song Dynasty. "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" shows that the rivers and mountains are more delicate, which is a representative work of ancient green landscape painting, and the picture is thousands of weather, beautiful and magnificent. "Qingming On the River" is full of life, which is an ink landscape painting and a representative work of genre painting.
However, Zhang Zeduan painted the "Qingming River Map", which lasted ten years, but Wang Ximeng only took half a year to paint the brightly colored "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", when he was only 18 years old, and it is said that he died young at about 20 years old. Therefore, Wang Ximeng has also become the only genius teenager in the history of Chinese painting who has been famous for a painting for thousands of years.
In the historical records, there is not much information about this genius painter, and posterity only knows a little about the teenager's resume from a piece of text seen when opening the scroll. The text reads: "The eighth day of the eighth month of the leap year of the three years of political peace. At the age of eighteen, Xi Meng was a disciple in painting, and was summoned to the forbidden Chinese library, and several paintings were dedicated, but they did not work. Knowing that his nature is teachable, he instructed him, and taught him the Dhamma himself, not more than half a year old, but in this way he tried to advance. Shangjiazhi, because he gave the subject Jing, said that the world's corporal was just doing it. ”
According to the Northern Song Dynasty chancellor Cai Jing, Wang Ximeng was a student of painting when he was young, and was later summoned to the library of the palace. The work of the library is mainly to copy accounts, cataloguing, etc., but Wang Ximeng still likes to paint, so he made paintings several times and dedicated them to Emperor Huizong of Song. At first, the technique was immature, and the emperor was not very satisfied, but he found that he was a talent that could be created, and he was specially accepted as an apprentice and personally guided the painting method.
After the creation of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" was completed, it was dedicated to Emperor Huizong of Song, who in turn gave the painting to Cai Jing, the prime minister of the dynasty and a famous calligrapher, and Cai Jing became the first collector of this painting. In other words, Cai Jing was able to prevent Wang Ximeng from becoming a "nameless" nobleman. Because the "Map of a Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" was completed under the guidance of the emperor, according to the imperial rules at that time, the painter could only sign the money with the permission of the emperor. However, because Emperor Huizong of Song gave this work to Cai Jing, who inscripted the painting and wrote the name of the painter.
It was publicly exhibited four times in the 1950s, 1980s, 1999 and 2013, but at that time, due to limited exhibition conditions, the works were only partially opened. At the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a huge Chinese landscape painting was slowly unveiled, stunning the world, it is the "Map of a Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", but it is presented with the help of science and technology. It wasn't until 2017, at the Forbidden City in Beijing, that people could finally enjoy it in its entirety. The main reason is that the green landscape of the painting is ground into powder from colored mineral raw materials, painted, and every time the scroll is opened, the pigment is seriously peeled off, which is easy to destroy the original appearance of the painting.
Green landscape painting is a kind of Chinese landscape painting, founded in the Tang Dynasty, after several generations of development, the formation of a certain stylized expression method, it is not easy to paint well, Wang Ximeng not only inherited the techniques of his predecessors, but also sought changes between the green and green tones, paying attention to a variety of techniques and use, the composition is very rigorous, so that the picture is layered, interesting and vivid, becoming the pinnacle in the history of the development of green landscape painting.
The whole painting pours out the talent and emotion of the teenager, and the fate of the painting is much more tenacious than that of Wang Ximeng. After Cai Jing, the paintings have been transferred several times, from Song Lizong, through the Monk Puguang of the Yuan Dynasty, Liang Qingbiao of the Qing Dynasty, Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, Xuantong of the Qing Dynasty, Puyi of the Qing Dynasty, and finally collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing.
It's just that the painter's life is much more fragile. According to the "Records of Famous Paintings of the Northern Song Dynasty", Wang Ximeng was not yet 20 years old when he died, that is, shortly after he finished painting the "Map of a Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". The book says that he was given death because he angered the emperor, and some people think that he was "tired and tired" - in order to complete this huge painting, the teenage Wang Ximeng must have stayed up late to work and overstretched his energy.