The National Palace Museum in Taipei collects the "Four Kings" Wang Yuan Qi Landscape Appreciation

Wang Yuanqi (1642-1715 AD), also known as Maojing, was a Lutai and Shishi Daoist, and a servant of the Official Household Department. Wang Yuanqi and his grandfather Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Yi together called the Qing "Four Kings", the four kings inherit ancient law, occasional or innovation, in the Qing Dynasty retro zungu environment, has been strongly valued by the imperial court, when the landscape painting to the literati painting, the entire early Qing Dynasty painting for three hundred years in the history, the status of the "Four Kings" is pivotal, known as the orthodoxy of Qing Dynasty painting. Wang Yuanqi is the grandson of Wang Shimin, the founder of this situation. The work can be described as inheriting the ancestral law and creating a unique model, proposing a unique theory of "dragon vein" in the landscape.

However, since the New Culture Movement in 1919, Wang Yuanqi's artistic achievements and historical status have been questioned and denied by art scholars. For example, whether his "dragon vein" theory is just a repetitive patchwork of the compositions of his predecessors, or whether he focuses on imitation of the past and ignores natural sketching. However, with the gradual development of art history, there is now a more comprehensive and objective evaluation of Wang Yuanqi and even the four kings' artistic concepts and works of art in the painting world.

Wang Yuanqi deeply grasped the essence of the paintings of his predecessors, and combined the brushwork of the Yuanren with the ink method of the Song people, and the penmanship was very powerful and powerful, and the ink method was suitable. His pen and ink techniques have had a profound influence on the early Qing Dynasty and even in the modern and contemporary painting world. Today, I will enjoy and discuss with you the works of Wang Yuanqi landscape collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Wang Yuanqi was born in the seventh year of Qing Chongde (1642), under the influence of his grandfather Wang Shimin, he was intelligent and studious from an early age, and had a high artistic talent. At the age of ten, he was able to paint small landscape paintings. At that time, Wang Shimin was sixty years old, and when he saw his grandson's painting on the wall of his study, he was greatly surprised and said, "This son's karma will come out of my right." At the age of twenty, he formally studied painting with Wang Shimin, and was carefully guided by Wang Shimin to "distinguish between the six laws of intercession and analysis, and the differences between ancient and modern".

Wang Yuanqi's landscape can inherit his grandfather's pen and ink method, and the shallowness of Huang Gongwang in ancient times is particularly vivid, which can be described as "cooked but not sweet, raw and not astringent, light and thick, solid and clear, and the atmosphere of the books is full of ink." At that time, wang Jian, the elder of the clan, saw his painting and also sighed to Wang Shi sensitively: "The two of us should let the head of the land." In the ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1670), he entered the priesthood and became an official to the Hubu Shilang, known as "Wang Sinong". In 1700, he even entered the Inner House to identify the calligraphy and paintings in the royal collection, and was instructed to compile the "Peiwen Zhai Painting Spectrum" by decree, and presided over the painting of the "Longevity Celebration Map" on kangxi's 60th birthday, and his beautiful style was loved by Kangxi.

Looking at Wang Yuanqi's landscape painting creation, it can be found that Wang Yuanqi copied more painters of the Southern Sect since the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, and in addition to copying pen and ink, he unanimously pursued and studied the business position and bone method of landscape painting with brushes, and he put forward the "dragon vein" theory of painting, which can be said to be derived from the development of the layout of landscape painting in the "business position" theory of Sheikh's "six laws". It can be said that as a well-known eunuch literati painter, Wang Yuanqi occupied the forefront of the development of Chinese painting with his talent and diligent practice. It developed the artistic situation of "purity, righteousness and elegance" under the Confucian aesthetic thought pioneered by Wang Shimin and Wang Jian.