Xu Beihong Ren Bonian statue Xu Beihong Memorial Collection
Ren Yi (1840-1896), also known as Bo Nian (字伯年), was a native of Shanyin (present-day Shaoxing), Zhejiang, along with Ren Xiong, Ren Xuan, and Ren Pre, and was known as the "Four Rens". Among the "four terms", he has the most outstanding achievements and is the best in the Hai School. His father, Ren Yunfeng, was a folk painter, and Ren Yi learned to paint with his father since childhood, and then received careful guidance from Ren Xiong and Ren Kaoru, and began his career as a professional painter in Shanghai selling paintings for a living. His technique is comprehensive, and the characters, landscapes, flowers and birds, animals, insects and fish can all be written into interesting strokes, both forms and gods, and calligraphy is also involved in painting. On the one hand, his painting art is based on tradition and absorbs the strengths of all, and at the same time, he absorbs the shorthand and color expression methods of Western painting, forming his own unique painting style of colorful and elegant and popular appreciation.
Qing Renyi's "Flower Album" Collection of Changshu Museum
Judging from Ren Yi's personal artistic achievements, the creation of flower and bird paintings is extremely creative. In the early years, he was known for his work and pen, "imitating the Northern Song Dynasty method, purely with scorched ink hook bones, thick color, near the old lotus school", and later absorbed Yun Shouping's boneless method, Chen Chun, Xu Wei, Zhu Yun's freehand method, pen and ink indulgent and spicy, set the color bright, forming a part-time work with writing, bright and warm style. This kind of painting method that integrates brushwork, freehand, outline and boneless has had a huge impact on modern and modern flower and bird painting.
Ren Yi is a prolific painter and a highly prolific painter, leaving a large number of heirloom works in his painting career of more than 30 years. The Changshu Museum has several works by Ren Yi, and the Floral Catalogue is one of the masterpieces of his early painting style, which has been recorded in the Catalogue of Ancient Chinese Calligraphy and Paintings.
This album is small and large in the square inches of the scale, the picture is full of interest and vitality, the gestures are smooth and free, the tones are fresh and moist, and it truly achieves the common appreciation of elegance and customs, and the artistic enjoyment it gives to the viewer is timeless.
"Floral Sketch Book", a total of 12 open, silk color, length 27.5 cm, width 34.5 cm, the last opening painting in the upper right section of the title: "Tongzhi Seven Years in October, for the Cun Weng Old Bo Lin Zhang Menggao twelve frames to seek advice, Ren Yi." After the white text of the square seal "Yi Yin". In the lower left, the white text square seal reads "Heaven's End Love Taste Battle Wine Qing Sorrow Flower Dispels Heroism". This set of albums was composed in 1868 when Ren Yi was 29 years old, and it is all folded flowers, with bright colors and part-time work belts. The paintings of Yu Beauty, Moon Season, Hollyhock, Peony, Rhododendron, Peach Blossom, Wisteria, Lotus, Chrysanthemum, Okra, Daffodil, Plum Blossom, etc., are extremely vivid and charming. This work painted on silk, the composition is mostly similar, the pen is more neat and delicate, the color is bright and not fire, the bone method is slightly restrained, but it can convey the delicate and delicate feelings of the flowers being written, which is Ren Yi's early painting style is still relatively neat and rigorous.