Fresh and elegant, one of the "Four Monks of the Qing Dynasty", a landscape fan of Yuan Ji

Wu Xueliang

The trees on the rocks nearby are gathered and scattered, there are evergreen pines, there are also miscellaneous trees whose leaves have turned yellow, and maple trees whose leaves are red after frost... The house is half-hidden between the trees. Near the water's edge, a person on the boat supports a penny, two people sit opposite, is it a boat trip? Looking around, the distant mountains are green, the shadows are enough, what is above the platform under the mountain? Carefully distinguished, oh, it turned out to be a mountain pavilion. Judging from the scenery depicted in the picture, it is already the time of autumn.

This is a fan-sided "Long Dry Autumn Color Map" painted by Yuan Ji in the Qing Dynasty, two slope stones in the vicinity are thick and one light, two clusters of miscellaneous trees have heavy ink, there are also outlined fill colors, thick and light, two houses are half hidden, a composition of one opening and one closing, making the picture seem simple but has a unique charm. Using ink thickness to contrast changes, seeking coordination in contrast is one of the characteristics of this work, you see the outline of the mountain stone, with the pen decisive, dignified, the use of ink of the mountain stone, the ink color changes, the contrast seeks unity. Rubbing casually, drawing the texture of the mountain stone with the pen, adding a sense of thickness to the mountain stone with thick brush and ink, and then adding thick and light trees, contrasting with the distant mountains, the picture suddenly comes alive. The boats and the characters on the shores of the water play a role in moving in silence, thus making the picture richer.

Yuan Ji (1642 - about 1708), also known as Shi Tao, a painter in the early Qing Dynasty, a native of Guilin, Guangxi, whose ancestral home was Fengyang, Anhui, the son of Zhu Hengjia, the king of Jingjiang in the late Ming Dynasty, became a monk after being transformed into a monk at an early age, with the legal name Yuan Ji, a yuanji, a small character, a long character, a character Shi Tao, nicknamed Dadizi, a bitter melon monk, a blind venerable, and so on. In his early years, he was a landscape master of the Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty, with a sparse painting style, and in his later years, his brushwork was indulgent, and he used ink to pour out freely, and he formed the "Four Monks of the Qing Dynasty" with Hongren, Jia Yan and Zhu Yun.