"The Biography of the Painter" ~ 285th article
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > Gong Xian was poor all his life, born poor, and dead poor. A lifetime of livelihood</h1>
Text/Lu Xiuhui
Gong Xian (1618-1689), also known as Yi Xian, the word half a thousand, half an acre, the number of wild relics, also known as Chai Zhangren, Zhongshan Yelao, Jiangsu Kunshan people.
Gong Xian was poor all his life, poor in life, and poor in death. His good friend Zhou Lianggong often helped him during his tenure as an official in Jiangnan Province, making his situation slightly better. Subsequently, Zhou Lianggong left his job, his life was once again impoverished, and he was an all-round artist buried by poverty.
When Gong Xian was born, his family was not bad, his grandfather and father were both officials outside, and he also moved to Nanjing with his father who was an official. His tragedy began before the age of ten, when his mother died suddenly, and there is an old proverb Chinese: Lao Tzu who would rather die as an official, and a mother who does not die begging for food. Gong Xian, who lacks a mother, does not need to be described in his childhood, and he lacks love. When he was eleven years old, his grandfather and father went to Sichuan to become officials, and since then, they have not been heard from.
And Si Shi, in the third year of Chongzhen, around 1630 AD, Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng made a big fuss in Guanzhong, and in Shuzhong, Zhang Xianzhong was the time to do things. In the same year, Chongzhen mistakenly killed Yuan Zonghuan, and the Ming Dynasty began to decline to the end.
There are records that he began to engage in Dong Qichang's painting at the age of thirteen, and I personally have some doubts about this. At that time, there were countless people in the world who claimed to learn painting from Dong Qichang. Just like the current calligraphers and painters, they blow up their bulls and call themselves someone's students in order to raise their own value, and this self-raising value is too important for Gong Xian. It is said that he is a student of Dong Qichang, based on his self-inscription on the painting: "Painting does not have to be far away from the ancients, and recently such as Dong Huating's pen and ink are high and easy, and they are also cute." This work is similar to that of Longyou, and Yu Shaoshi and Longyou are the same teacher as Huating. He said in "Flat Boat":
When the flat boat was dawning, the sand bank was empty.
People speak outside the smoke, chickens chirp in the sea.
The short coat has gone to the country, and the white head is still flowing.
Do not read the biography of Jing Ke, shame as a sword male.
Dong Qichang was a retired Nanjing Rebbe Shangshu at that time, and the activity centers were mostly Songjiang and Jiangnan. And Gong Xian's mother's dead father is missing, how can he win the trust of Dong Qichang and learn from him? Moreover, in the winter of that year, Dong Qichang was summoned to the north to resume the post of Shangshu of the Ministry of Rites and take charge of the affairs of the Zhan Shifu. He befriended Yang Wenxiao, who lived in Nanjing, and learned from Gong Xian's own inscription that a terminal machine was "anti-dragon friend". Dragon friends, that is, Yang Wenxiao. He is more likely to learn from Yang Wenxiao. During the Hongguang years, although he had close contact with the people in the Fu Society, he was also quite friendly with Ma Shiying. Ma Shiying, Yang Wenxiao's brother-in-law. He asked dong qichang, and I thought that with Dong Qichang's style, he would not look at thirteen-year-old children differently.
After the change of Jiashen, the small court of Hongguang was born, and with his relationship with Yang Wenxiao, it was impossible for Ma Shiying not to take care of him. From his later allusions to Kong Shangren's calendar, it is certain that he must be one of the characters. Otherwise, a painter can gossip about what lace. When the Qing army attacked Nanjing, Gong Xian avoided trouble because he did not live in the city. After the destruction of Nanjing, he could not continue to live in Nanjing, and in order to make a living, he had to pay Xu Yi's appointment and go to Liuzhuang of Xu's clan in Hai'an Town, Taizhou, to set up an account to teach his son Xu Ning. One is five years, five years of solitude, to the capital situation. Here, he teaches and reads, explores the theory of painting and painting, and gets along well with Xu Yi, a hermit who "avoids the world and does not thank guests, farms and buys books", and his family. He wrote affectionately in the poem "Liuzhuang":
Xu's Liuzhuang ancient, Liuwei Zhuangshi round.
Limit the water is muddy, and you will board the boat when you stay.
Nap dreams, living alone temperament is biased.
Cook fish as vegetables, slippery rice for more than enough years.
At this time, Gong Xianji was alone and alone, until he was about forty years old, and then he continued the string in Yangzhou, and he was happy to have a noble son in the next year. Zhou Lianggong was impeached, arrested and retrialed by the Ministry of Punishment, and after passing through Yangzhou, Gong Xian deliberately boarded the ship to comfort him. Two years later, Zhou Lianggong passed through Yangzhou, and Gong Xian met with Zhou Lianggong again, and the two sighed.
Who knows, the days of his wife and children in Yangzhou did not last long, around the second year of Kangxi (1664), Gong Xian's stepwife and other relatives died eight times in succession, and he was hit hard. Parents are gone, wives and children are dead. He wrote the poem "The Sons of The Guangling Liu Bei Nan Zhong", saying:
Although the grand tour is my ambition, this trip is really sad and hard.
Eight died early, and they were all human.
In the fifth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Zhou Lianggong was transferred to Jiang'an Grain Road in Jiangnan. In the sixth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Jiangnan Province was divided into Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, and Zhou Lianggong acted as a political envoy to Anhui. In the same year, Gong Xian bought four or five rooms in the city's Qingliang Mountain under the Tiger Guanwa House in Nanjing for hundreds of gold, built half an acre of garden, and Zhou Liang worked on the poem "Half a Thousand Moving Homes" to congratulate him. It must be said that Gong Xian was able to resettle in Nanjing, and Zhou Lianggong gave great help. Zhou Lianggong and Kong Shangren, the author of "Peach Blossom Fan", not only share the same ideals as Gong Xian, but also are Gong Xian's main financial supporters. When Zhou Lianggong died, Gong Xian's elegy contained a lament: "Crying public alone, my head is completely white, and in the world who is more blue-eyed" lamented.
Gong Xian's old age was even more tragic, relying on his sister to help cook in his daily life. At the age of seventy-one, Gong Xian, who was poor and sick, had a serious illness. When Kong Shangren came to visit Jinling and visit Gong Xian, the two shook hands and talked happily. Gong Xian, who was ill, told Kong Shangren about the anecdotes of the small court of Hongguang in Nanjing, as well as his personal experience in Nanjing, which played a very important role in the birth of the famous drama "Peach Blossom Fan" ten years later, and Kong Shangren also left his name in the history of Chinese literature. Kong Shangren has a visit to Gong's Caotang poem "Tiger Juguan Visiting Gong Ye Relics Caotang" recorded:
The tiger is close to Gu Xiongguan, and it is as vicious as a beast.
The heavenly spirit has disappeared, and the closed door is not old.
Clusters of Yu village ruins, bamboo trees are more lush.
Sometimes there are tall adults, and the lower dwellings are in the same place.
Watch the smoke fill the city at night, and see the clouds full of clouds in the morning.
To experience the depths of the exchange, to be in harmony with the spirit.
One horse and one chant, the creator teaches.
For a long time, the customs have shifted, and the simplicity has returned to the universe.
I came to visit Hengmen, and it was old.
Sit me in the tree, fill me with a bean.
Listen to the preface, and give birth to the last.
Sunset under The West Forest, autumn cold oranges and grapefruit.
Ride the towel wood book, want to don't still put the sleeve.
Difficult and rare, Zhang Qincheng solo.
Kong Shangren saw that he was so serious, knew that he needed money for medical treatment, and asked Gong Xian to make the "Map of Shimen Mountain". Gong Xian, who was seriously ill, also understood Kong Shangren's meaning and knew that he was looking for a fund from the head to help him. Therefore, he forcibly supported the sick body and painted for his friend Kong Shangren, and he was very happy in his heart. At this time, there was an obviously powerful and arrogant person who asked Gong Xianqiang for calligraphy and paintings, and Gong Xian was angry and felt uncomfortable, resulting in bedridden and aggravated his condition. He asked his apprentice to ask Kong Shangren, who promised to plot a "method of descending the dragon and ambushing the tiger" for him to save him. However, before Kong Shangren could come out, Gong Xian fell ill in the half-acre garden. After Gong Xian's death, because he was poor and could not be buried in a coffin, Kong Shangren endured grief, took care of the aftermath for him, and moved Gong Xian to his hometown Kunshan for burial. The orphan son left by Gong Xian was also raised by Kong Shangren. Friends Kong Shangren, life is fortunate. Kong Shangren asked Gong Xian to paint only half of the "Map of Shimen Mountain", which was later continued by Dai BenXiao.
Gong Xian became famous for poetry, and during his visit to Hai'an and Yangzhou, he created a large number of poems when he was rich and powerful. During that period, he did not paint a lot, and in Yangzhou alone, he wrote more than two hundred poems. His poems are very distinctive, simple and reborn, quite late Tang Dynasty flavor. Gong Xian was poor all his life, and his poems, starting from touching his own soul, expressed his views on society with a concise artistic language, which was popular as words. He has several "Fishing Songs", poems:
Since the boat is not home, there are reeds everywhere in the moon. Soup carp, steamed shrimp, wind leads to cooking smoke a slope.
The people have never been nameless, and they have lived a lifetime of smoke and waves. The wind is heavy, the coat is light, and the bow of the ship cannot be changed when it is asleep.
Rice is fish and shrimp water is the field, rent no official to the door. Idle hook, drunk still sleeping, that has a fierce abundance does not ask the year.
Holding a pole to sit on the cold moss, frost fell high on the sky sideburns urge. With one heart and two eyebrows, Sheng threw a stab at Zhu Men.
Red shrimp and purple crab make soup, and the rice puffs must be shrunken with wine syrup. Can be drunk, proud of the prince. Buckle a song in the waves.
The store is full of smoke and dust, why is it like sitting on a fishing pond? The wind is fine, the water is sparkling, and the fisherman's moon is illuminated.
As a fisherman, he does not fish, and the boat is full of wine and books. Idle to go, and slowly, only to move home to live in the wilderness.
There is no one to fight over the wild waters in the world, and there is the sound of jingo iron horses. Green cranes stand, white gulls chirp, and I am not alarmed by the ghost birds.
Gong Xian is a landscape painter, his paintings follow the five generations of Dong Yuan, Ju Ran, and then take the brush and ink of the Northern School of Painting in the early Song Dynasty as the teacher's method, and then use the brush style and ink rhyme of Mi Fu, Mi Youren Father and Son, Wu Zhen and Shen Zhou, plus his own observation and feeling of natural landscapes, forming a simple ink accumulation method. With the ancient, healthy, old, and cang, it has formed its own unique artistic language. It successfully expresses the characteristics of the dense, moist and deep landscape of Jiangnan, making the picture have a wet and thick feeling.
General painters often use wet ink to smear ink rhymes, and Gong Xian clearly pointed out: "Ink rhymes, clear that it is not wet, moist ink is fresh, wet ink dies", specifically pointing out; "The method of piling first dries and then wets, so it is moist and boney, if it is wet first and then dried, then the ink is dead." With his remarks to refer to his painting method, it can be known that Gong Xian's "run" is actually a moderate humidity, the key is that the pen can be seen when it is stained, if it is too wet, the ink is sticky, the pen and ink are obstructed, and the chaos is for "dead ink". Gong Xian uses the ink accumulation method, layer by layer, layer by layer, its rhyme is endless, no wonder people know that "the reason why half a thousand is unique to thousands of years is more in ink".
Gong Xian's calligraphy, the yuanhou of Yan Lugong, the Ren Yi of Minang Palace, the Ariake Zodiac Zhou, Ni Yuanlu, Zhang Ruitu and other people also studied intently, and used the painting method into calligraphy, which was more passionate in the change, so that the intricacies did not lose the law, forming Gong Xian's own calligraphy art language. In his works, sometimes he sees depression, sometimes he sees pain. The depressed are often troubled by life; the happy people, painting and writing to the heart, can they not be happy? The contradictions in his mood make his works often have a divine stroke.
Lu Xiuhui has a poem "Song for Mr. Gong Xian Banqian", a poem cloud:
Huaizuozhi,
Half a thousand poems and paintings are shocking,
Chest of the predecessors low medallion,
Poor and unable to fly for a lifetime.
Hate the high heavens, despise the wise,
Make it difficult for ru to be famous in the world.
Bitter but with no auspiciousness,
Refuse to faint for the rest of your life,
This tear throws it,
Nothing is heard.
Painting can get it,
Poetry also He Yun,
Alone and mourning.
Eight people resigned in succession,
Doubtful.
I don't see you,
Ru and Yangzhou reciprocally saga,
Everything Tsuenagi,
Sorrow to huichuan.
Jun Yu in the painting to get Haoyuan,
Lead to the dive.
The stream and the mountains must not go,
Through the ages are more in ink,
Poetry is hard to match.
Painting to the extreme,
Like a river of clouds.
This gentleman means to draw virtue,
Rich and noble people so also,
How can you know that the king owes it!
Lu Xiuhui's paintings