Collection Appreciation - Fang Shishu's "Spring Dawn of Huzhuang"

Fang Shishu's "Huzhuang Chunxiao Tu" (see picture below), which is now in the Yunnan Provincial Museum, is colored on paper, with a length of 166 cm and a width of 75 cm. This picture adopts the three-stage composition of Ni Zhan, showing the scenery of Jiangnan Lake Township. The inscription at the top of the work is divided into three parts. On the right is the author's paragraph: "Qianlong Ten Years, Years in the Middle Winter Month of Yi Ugly, Imitating Zhao Danian's "Huzhuang Chunxiao Tu", painted for the second brother in the Reading Spring Grass Hall of the Western Domain, Xiaoshi Old Brother Shi shu", and the two seals of "Huanshan" and "Xiaoshi Daoist". In the middle and on the left, there are inscriptions by the painter's friends and his uncle, which describe the circulation of the work and the emotional activities of relatives to see things and think about people. In the picture, trees are dotted on the edge of lakes and rivers and ponds, and several houses loom behind the trees, distant mountains, smoke, and the artistic conception is empty and distant. Although the painter said that he imitated the brushwork of Zhao Lingyong of the Northern Song Dynasty in the inscription of this work, in addition to the composition of Gao Yuan, he used the phi ma of the five generations of Dong Yuan and Wang Meng of the Yuan Dynasty, making the style of the work more refined and elegant. In terms of perception, the whole work is relaxed, dense and intertwined, and full of rhythmic beauty. In terms of pen and ink techniques, this work reflects the artistic orientation of Fang Shishu's painting method of Wang Yuanqi landscape painting and drawing on many Song and Yuan dynasties. In his works, the painter uses fine and rigorous dyeing to make the mountains and stones tight, the trees gather, and the smoke clouds hazy. The light and elegant color setting based on light and the elegant layout of the picture reflect the painter's pursuit of poetry. This work highlights Fang Shishu's profound traditional pen and ink skills and light and elegant artistic style, showing his simple and natural state of mind.

Fang Shishu (1692-1751), character Xunyuan, Yizuo Xunyuan, number Huanshan (because of his ancestors in the Northern Song Dynasty ju Shehuan Mountain), and because the small characters were lions, so in his later years his name was Xiaoshi Daoren, a small master Daoist, whose ancestral home was Xin'an (present-day Shexian County, Anhui), Jiuju Weiyang (present-day Yangzhou, Jiangsu), was a more representative master in the "Loudong School". In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, he was a painter who was as active in the Yangzhou area as the "Eight Monsters of Yangzhou". His landscape painter Fa Huangding, with delicate pen and ink, is far away and quiet. He is also good at floral sketching and will "accidentally pick up" small ink prints in his proud works.

Fang Shishu was not only good at painting, but also working on calligraphy. Jin Nong of the Qing Dynasty wrote in the "Winter Heart Seal Knowledge": "Mr. Huanshan is known as Wucheng in calligraphy, with a strict structure and pure learning of Si Weng (Dong Qichang). Near the pool of time, intercropping landscape small. Among his calligraphy works, such as "Bamboo Branch Words" and "Ascending Turtle Collection", etc., all show his achievements in calligraphy. In terms of poetry, Fang Shishu also has a high attainment, and has participated in many famous poetry collections in Yangzhou. His poems are faint and distant, especially gong wuyan, and the style is similar to his paintings, such as "The road is dark and afraid of traveling, and Lin faints and loses his late cooking." After the autumn leaves, people go to the chrysanthemums first."

In the theory of painting, Fang Shishu also established a unique creative and aesthetic ideological system. He expressed his artistic views in the Essays of Tenren an and in many of his paintings. He once said: "Mountains and rivers, grass and trees, the creation of nature, this reality also." Because the mind creates the realm, with the hand to transport the heart, this virtual realm also. The virtual is the reality, in the pen and ink. He also said: "The ancients wrote and ink with this mountain and tree show, water and living stones, outside the heavens and the earth, do not constitute a kind of spiritual wonder." Or sprinkle it spontaneously, but also alchemy into liquid, abandon the essence, and bend to the magic of the shadow. ”

Judging from the works passed down from generation to generation, Fang Shishu was not confined to the "Lou Dong Sect" landscape program, but was widely recruited and acquired, and Huang Gongwang and Wang Meng of the Yuanzong Emperor, and the close teachers Shen Zhou and Wang Yuanqi established a mellow and clean painting style. He regards painting as a carrier for expressing the subjective feelings of the painter and the interest of brush and ink, as well as the product of the intermingling of the spirit of pen and ink with the actual scenery, that is, "the wind god of the ancestors, the form of the writer" ("Essays on The Heavenly Lazy Temple"). This "Spring Dawn Map of Huzhuang" is a powerful embodiment of Fang Shishu's immersion in traditional ink and depicting inner tranquility.

——Excerpt from China Painting and Calligraphy