In his life, 50 years were given to art and 30 years to God.
The beginning of the story is so mundane, but every character is not accidental.
Because of a Catholic church in front of his home, the seeds of religion were planted in the hearts of teenagers, just waiting for the buds after a thunderstorm.
The young man was baptized by God and later made his own number with an ink well in the courtyard.
Wu Li, the word Yushan, the number of ink well.
Jiangsu Changshu Wu Li, after the Ming Dynasty bureaucracy, his father died early, and after the change of the Ming and Qing regimes, witnessed the demise of the Ming Dynasty, in the helplessness of "the country is broken by mountains and rivers", he could not give up his inner national feelings, preferring to give up his meritorious name and cloth for a lifetime, and his spiritual world also drew a trajectory that was very different from others with the changes in history and circumstances.
This is a trajectory of poetry, calligraphy and painting.
At the age of 17, Wu Li began to study the scriptures with Taicang Chen Hu, and then studied poetry with Qian Qianyi, and there was also a teacher who studied the piano, Chen Min, who studied calligraphy Yan Zhenqing and Su Dongpo, especially su Dongpo's calligraphy. It is said that once he went to Wuzhong to visit a friend, and when he was resting in the temple, he saw the authentic manuscript of Dongpo's "Drunken Pavilion", and he immediately borrowed a pen and paper to copy it in the temple day and night, stayed for several days, and forgot about the visiting friend.
▲ Wu Li Xing inscription painting poem
It is said that everything is not as good as a fine, but Wu Li is all the same and the same fine.
He wrote poetry collections, monographs, and catalogues of paintings, repertoire, the most famous of course, paintings.
In the early days of Wu Li, he studied painting with Wang Jian and Wang Shimin, went through the paintings of Wang Shimin and Tang Yuzhao, imitated a large number of famous Paintings of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, made Buddhist friends at the age of 30, toured the Beijing Division at the age of 40, and cultivated in Macao at the age of 50, experienced changes in ideology from Confucianism to Buddhism to Catholicism, and also experienced several turns in painting from imitation of the ancient to pseudo-ancient and ancient de-ancient, canggu barren rate, from green and heavy color to underscoring Huazi and condensing simplicity, and finally became a member of the "Six Families of the Early Qing Dynasty" with "calligraphy and painting and extinction".
▲Wu Li "Yunbai Mountain Qingtu"
▲Wu Li "Xingfu an Sense Old Map"
▲Wu Li's "Autumn Landscape Map"
▲Wu Li "Hengshan Qing mist map"
▲ Wu Li "Imitation of Zhao Danian Hejing Na LiangTu"
▲Wu Li "Huashan Ancient Temple Map"
▲ Wu Li "Imitation of Yellow Crane Mountain Qiao Yun Valley Song Yin Map"
▲ Wu Li "Imitation of Xu Daoning Landscape"
▲Wu Li's "Imitation of Tang Dynasty XieYuanxi Mountain Small Hidden Map"
▲ Wu Li "Imitation Of Yanlong Tu Dongqing Fishing Boat Map"
▲Wu Li's "Imitation Yuanren Landscape"
▲Wu Li "Liucun Autumn Thoughts"
▲Wu Li's "Bamboo Stone Windward Map"
▲Wu Li "Mei Jutu"
There is no need to return to the world, and I will go far away to study in the rivers and lakes.
At the age of 31, the successive deaths of his mother and wife touched wu Li's idea of "birth", and he began to get close to the Buddhist Gate and became a confidant with the monk Mo Rong of The Xingfu Temple in Yushan Mountain.
Avoidance of the world did not affect his deep love for life, he was filial to his widowed mother, his wife died and did not marry, he revered and followed his scribes, painters, violinists and village sage elders, and tacitly tolerated and Xu Zhi gradually formed a contract of life and death, and also showed infinite affection in painting donations. In addition to selling paintings to his mother in the early days, most of Wu Li's later works were given to friends, and many of his works were collected in The Xingfu Temple.
Influenced by Chen Hu, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Wu Li, who had just turned twelve, was obsessed with his homeland, exuding a sense of the Ming remnants who were higher than his peers, and most of the paintings he painted did not fall behind the Qing Dynasty era number, but used the dry branch to chronicle. Between 1671 and 1675, the Buddhist friend Mo Rong and the Confucian scribe Chen Hu died one after another, once again changing the trajectory of Wu Li's faith.
▲Wu Li "Lake Sky Spring Color Map"
▲Wu Li's "Rain Scattering Smoke And Mountains"
In 1676, Wu Li became acquainted with the Belgian Catholic Lu Riman and made a "Picture of the Spring of the Lake" to give to another missionary. Perhaps it was the new concept of religious belief that relieved the hatred of the remnants in his chest, and in another "Map of Rain And Smoke" in the same year, Wu Li used the Qing Dynasty era number for the first time: "When Kangxi Bingchen, Qiu She's fast rain and clear heart, several cases are sprinkled." ”
In 1681, his celestial teacher, Father Bai Yingli, planned to go to Rome to ask the Pope to send more missionaries, and he selected five Chinese religious people, including Wu Li, to accompany him. When he arrived in Macau, he was told that the Holy See only allowed two Chinese to enter, and Wu Li stayed in the Samba Ashram in Macau to study the Tao, and officially joined the Jesuits the following year, becoming a true priest, named Simon Xavier, during which time he painstakingly studied Latin and Catholic doctrine.
In the following 10 years, Wu Li devoted all his body and mind to religious undertakings, and rarely painted, occasionally, and mostly for missionary needs.
It can be said that in the last 30 years of Wu Li's life, he devoted himself to the catholic cause and willingly lived an ascetic life. He has been running between urban and rural areas for missionary work, preaching in Nanjing, Shanghai and other places, managing his congregations and church property, and according to records, his followers have more than 300 members.
After his death, Wu Li was buried in the Priest's Cemetery outside the South Gate of Shanghai, with the inscription "Tianxue Monk Yushan Wu Cemetery".
If it were not for the later "liturgical dispute" between China and the West that once led to the "prohibition of religion", Wu Li's works may have been much less.
When he picked up the brush again, it was 10 years later, although he put the pen aside a lot, the painting was considered to be more old and simple, and the pen was deep. At the age of 73, he claimed that his wrist strength was declining and his ink had been bald for a long time, but it did not affect him to create the peak of quantity and quality again, leaving behind masterpieces such as "Yokoyama Qingxiao", "Pseudo-Ancient Ancient Map", "Rural Happy Rain Map" and so on.
▲Wu Li's "Pseudo-Ancient Diagram"
▲Wu Li's "Xishan Rafting Map"
▲ Wu Li "Tao Pu Song Ju Tu"
▲Wu Li 'Snow Map of Xishan Mountain》
▲Wu Li's "Deep Show of Xishan Mountain"
Because he has been with Western priests for a long time and has also been exposed to many Western paintings, whether Wu Li's paintings are influenced by Western paintings has always been a topic of controversy in the academic circles, and perhaps some of his works will absorb some techniques of Western painting. But for Western painting, Wu Li has his own opinions, he once compared his paintings with Western paintings, clearly emphasizing the difference between Chinese and Western paintings.
Wu Li is a maverick "outlier" in the history of Chinese painting, he is attached to the mountains and rivers of his homeland, but he sincerely believes in God, wholeheartedly absorbs Western culture, but strictly abides by tradition in calligraphy and painting, these contradictions contradict each other in him, conservative and open, conform to the rules but bold and innovative.
However, these are not important, what is important is that he treated every choice with his heart, spent every life affectionately in the long years of 87 years, and played every role to the extreme!