A book of flower and bird paintings sold for 70 million
In the 2019 spring auction, a Qing Dynasty painter Yun Shouping's "Flower Album" sold for a high price of 74.75 million yuan, and this album sold for 6.93 million yuan in 2004.
Friends who are slightly familiar with traditional Chinese painting will know that flower and bird painting is a major subject of Chinese painting, the Song Dynasty Dasheng, at this time flower and bird painting appears two aesthetic styles: Huang Jia Fugui, Xu Xiyeyi.
The former is dominated by the style of court painters Huang Xiao and Huang Juyu's father and son, which are rich in color and exquisite in brushwork, and the latter is unique in the style of the opposition painter Xu Xi, who advocates natural freehand, and these two styles continued until the Ming Dynasty.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the appearance of a painter reminded people of the wild style of Xu Chongsi in the Northern Song Dynasty. His fresh and elegant style and emphasis on sketching have stood out among many flower and bird painters, and even formed their own genre, he is Yun Shouping.
Yun Shouping, a native of Changzhou, was originally named YunGe, the word Shouping, the number of Nantian, he is most famous for flowers and birds, "Jinshi Autumn Flower Diagram" "Peony Diagram" "Sketch Album" and other works are widely known to the public, whenever Yun Shouping is mentioned, it is always around the "Jinshi Autumn Flower Diagram".
What kind of painting is this? What's so special about it?
"Jinshi Autumn Flower Diagram" is written and painted in the "boneless method", and the image is directly dyed with pure color and ink. The color of the picture is bright and soft, showing the scenery of Pai Golden Autumn. The painting not only has the realistic shape of the flowers and birds of the brush, but also shows the vivid soul of the freehand flowers and birds.
The painting depicts flowers such as begonias and geese around a delicate lake stone, and there are clusters of autumn flowers growing in the lake stone, with bright and delicate colors.
Yun Shouping uses the traditional "boneless method" to dye the color into a painting, which is elegant and elegant, fully expressing the brightness of the flowers.
The so-called boneless method refers to the traditional Chinese painting method of directly dyeing the form of the object with ink color, without using ink lines to outline the edges. The boneless method is applied in landscape paintings and flower and bird paintings, and the resulting paintings are called "boneless landscapes" and "boneless flowers and birds".
The picture adopts a flexible right-hand composition, the main body is not centered, in the openwork space of the lake stone, the back of the flower shape interspersed with it, so that the whole picture has a rich sense of layering, although it is a flat rendering, but there is a certain spatial relationship.
Yun Shouping advocates sketching and pursues light and elegant colors. He said: "When laymen talk about painting, it is easy to set colors, and it is extremely difficult to render them. Painting to coloring, such as into the furnace hook, heavy exercise, the heat is slightly worse, the previous work is abandoned. ”
Therefore, he likes to directly dye the form of flowers with color dots, without outline, directly depicting the demeanor of various flowers, self-contained, fresh tones, this painting method breaks the previous generation of customary "hook flowers and dot leaves" method, with color pens instead of ink pens.
This "Jinshi Autumn Flower Diagram", completed at the age of 50, largely concentrates the typical style of Yun Shouping's boneless flowers and birds. At this time, Nantian had already formed his own unique and stable painting style, and also had a large number of followers.
In the upper left corner of the picture, the author wrote a poem by himself:
Gao Qiu is cold and delicate, and the red posture is still remnant spring color.
If you ask Dongfeng for your old name, the Qing Emperor never knew each other.
From the selection of the title to the inscription poem, it reflects the author's exquisite intentions, and both poetry and painting, not engraved and sought work, but seeking elegance and nature, which is enough to reflect the artistic concept and aesthetic interest pursued by Yun Shouping-Sheng.
Why is a simple painting of flowers and birds so sought after? What is the experience and background of the person who created the painting?
Yun Shouping was born in a family of official eunuchs, and from his great-grandfather until his father, he held important positions in the Ming Room and had a deep family history. When Yun Shouping was a teenager, he experienced social changes in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.
From the age of 10, Yun Shouping followed his father to fight against the Qing army with the rebel army, lost his brother, lost his father, died nine times- lived, scattered and reunited, and experienced the hardships brought about by political turmoil, and the turbulent life and inner grief were indescribable.
Although the anti-Qing fire has always been burning in his heart, the helpless general trend has gone, and Yun Shouping, who has experienced the cruelty of war, although loyal to the Ming Room, it is difficult to cooperate with the Qing court again, and he can only quit his career and survive on painting.
Yun Shouping originally started with landscape painting. According to legend, Yun Shouping first painted landscapes and had a good friendship with Wang Cui, thinking that he could not surpass his landscapes, so he said: "It is the Tao that makes brothers walk alone, and each is ashamed of being the second hand in the world." ，
In the Jiangnan painting world at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, there were already "orthodox factions" represented by the "four kings" of Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Cui, and Wang Yuanqi, as well as painters such as the "Eight Monsters of Yangzhou" who took the sword and rebelled against the tradition, and the landscape painting market was almost saturated, and it was necessary to "kill a blood road" among many famous people, and Yun Shouping finally gave up landscape water to specialize in flowers.
He studied far away from Song Xu Chongsi, a close scholar of Mingren, paid attention to sketching, further developed boneless techniques, used a sharp and buddy pen, and set the color clean and beautiful.
Yun Shouping washed the painting methods of his predecessors, eclectic, and created a new era style in the painting world. He used the "boneless method" to make it fascinating, and the flowers in his pen came to life, which had a great influence on the creation of flower and bird paintings in later generations.
Behind the blandness of the flowers is a legendary life, and only by experiencing the waves can we understand the true meaning of blandness. Looking at its flowers, the breeze is gentle, one grass and one tree, one flower and one leaf, just like walking on a mountain path.
No wonder Hu Jing praised the sun in the "Picture Catalogue of the National Dynasty": "The flowers of the National Dynasty, when Yun Shouping is the first, are light and beautiful, and the immortal bones are shanshan, such as the gugu does not eat fireworks in the world."
Yun Shouping became a general of a generation with boneless flowers and birds, and eventually achieved the status of the same name as the Four Kings and Wu Li, and was later known as the "Qing Six Families", that is, the "Four Kings Wu Yun".
His paintings were not only highly sought after by the literati and scholars, but also widely popular among the common people, causing the competition between the officials and nobles, celebrities of the government and the public, and famous bridesmaids to imitate them in the Changzhou area, and they were known as the representatives of the "Changzhou School".
His boneless painting method has had a great influence on later generations, and well-known modern painters ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo, Liu Haili, etc. have also copied and studied his paintings.
About Yun Shouping's "Jinshi Autumn Flower Diagram"
The best at depicting flowers and birds with "boneless method"; The works pay attention to sketching, set light and elegant, and emphasize painting to move people with emotion; His paintings were highly sought after at the time; He was named after the Four Kings and Wu Li and was known as the "Six Families of the Qing Dynasty"; He had a great influence on the creation of flower and bird paintings in later generations.