Why did these national treasures make Xu Beihong fall for it?

Source: Liberation Daily

As an important figure in the history of Chinese art in the 20th century, Xu Beihong not only made outstanding contributions and far-reaching influences in the field of art creation and art education, but also participated in the field of ancient Chinese calligraphy and painting collection.

During his lifetime, Xu Beihong dabbled in Western painting, Chinese painting and calligraphy, and Western painting had a greater influence on him. However, Xu Beihong still wrote inscriptions on many of his collections in accordance with the creation and collection habits of Chinese paintings, and also wrote inscriptions such as identification for the ancient calligraphy and painting collections of his friends.

Xu Beihong's inscriptions greatly distanced him from many collectors of his generation. Although Zhang Daqian, Liu Haisu and others are very collectible and participate in the creation at the same time, few of them will leave inscriptions on the paintings. This may seem trivial, but it is extremely important. Because for ancient Chinese paintings and calligraphy, the four aspects of collection and printing, inscription, bibliography, and mounting have been organically combined into a self-contained professional system, especially the many inscriptions in the collection are extremely important information resources when we study the previous generation of collectors today.

In March 1918, the 23-year-old Xu Beihong and his colleagues from the Peking University Painting Research Society viewed the ancient calligraphy and paintings in the Wenhua Hall of the Forbidden City and wrote the article "Commenting on the Calligraphy and Paintings Collected by the Wenhua Hall". From the writing, we can see that Xu Beihong's appraisal method as a whole is full of strong characteristics of traditional calligraphy and painting appraisal, especially in the wording, which is more obvious, such as "the five generations of Huang Xiao's "Eagle Chasing Thrush" frame, spiritual unity, realistic mood, although there is no money knowledge, it is true that Huang Xiao can not do it" "Song Huichong's "Landscape" volume, Hun Xiu is extremely beautiful. His painting school was original at that time", etc., showing a solid traditional calligraphy and painting education.

In addition, Xu Beihong has a very obvious feature in his evaluation of ancient paintings and calligraphy, that is, he mostly evaluates ancient Chinese paintings based on the aesthetics and techniques in Western paintings. Although Xu Beihong did not directly state his evaluation criteria in his writing, anyone with a certain experience in the creation of Western paintings can feel it.

Xu Beihong especially likes Jin Nong's work "Wind and Rain Return to the Boat". In his view, this work is "a miracle in Chinese landscape painting", which can be compared with The Song Dynasty Fan Kuan's "Journey to the Creek and Mountains", "Snow Scene cold forest map" and Zhou Chen's "Beiming Map", and is called "the four pillars of Chinese landscape painting".

Xu Beihong believes: "All the treasures of China, the one I most fall for, is Fan Zhongzhong's "Journey to Xishan"... Its rules are abrupt and make people stunned! Full frame, no failure... Another work is Dong Yuan's "Longsu Suburban People's Map" with a large color. The peaks overlap, and the penmanship and rules are incredible. ”

The overall painting style of these two works is rigorous and solid, belonging to the typical style of the Northern Song Dynasty, and in terms of internal characteristics, it is in line with Xu Beihong's aesthetic pursuit of respect for realism.

In fact, before learning Western painting, Xu Beihong already had a good foundation in Chinese brush and ink. During the 8 years he stayed in Europe, he "started from the painting tradition of the Song and Yuan dynasties on the one hand, and on the other hand, reconstructed the brush and ink system of Chinese painting with reference to the realistic modeling techniques of western academic schools." This practice of his underpins his educational philosophy and influences his collection of ancient paintings and calligraphy.