Author: Chen Yuncheng
Recently, the Shanghai Museum exhibited "Danqing Bao Raft - Dong Qichang Calligraphy and Painting Art Exhibition" to systematically sort out and re-understand Dong Qichang and his contemporary achievements in calligraphy and painting. It has attracted the attention of domestic academic circles.
Xiao Xiang Tu, Silk Book Dong Yuan (Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing)
"Creekbank Map" Silk Dong Yuan (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Part of Dong Yuan's "Xiashan Map"
Part of Zhao Mengfu's "Quehua Autumn Color Map" shows the unique inheritance relationship on the literati painting
"Xia Jing Shan Pass To Be Crossed" Silk Dong Yuan
Speaking of Dong Qichang's art, the name Dong Yuan has to be mentioned.
Why?
In Dong Qichang's famous theory of "The Theory of The Sects of the North and the South", Dong Yuan is an important representative painter, and it can be said that it is of great significance to the formation of Dong Qichang's theory.
In terms of painting style, Dong Yuan has more influence on Dong Qichang's painting style, which is an important source for the traceability of Dong Qichang's painting, and the beautiful, plain and innocent in Dong Qichang's painting is the creative inheritance of Dong Yuan's painting.
The founding father of the Southern School of Landscape
Dong Yuan, also known as Dong Yuan,Or Shu Da (叔達), was a native of ZhongLing (present-day Jinxian, Jiangxi), an official to the deputy envoy of the Southern Tang Dynasty Beiyuan, a painter of the Southern Tang Dynasty during the Five Dynasties, and was known as "Dong Beiyuan". Most of them are painted with real scenes of real mountains in Jiangnan, which are quiet and peaceful, and the frankness is really high.
According to the history of painting, Dong Yuan's paintings have two styles, one is to learn the green landscape of Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao's father and son, with very few wrinkles and the use of color, and the other way is to learn Wang Wei's method of ink and ink, sparse forests and distant trees, and deep plains. The paintings of the former style have not been passed down to the world, and the ink is faded all the way, and there are about "Xiajing Mountain Pass Waiting to Ferry", "Xiaoxiang Map", "Xiashan Map", "Longsu Suburban People's Map" and so on. This time, Dong Qichang's calligraphy and painting art exhibition transferred the "Xiashan Map" of the Shanghai Museum and the "Xiajing Mountain Pass To Be Crossed" of the Liaoning Museum, which aroused the audience's onlookers.
In the era with heavy color as the mainstream, Dong Yuan creatively used the skillful techniques of points and lines and the changes of pen and ink, and created a set of techniques with high generalization and expressiveness based on the real scene of Jiangnan, such as rubbing, pointing and dyeing, which matched the pen and ink with the shape of natural scenery, greatly enriched the expressiveness and taste of landscape painting, and was a major change in the history of landscape painting. Opened the chinese painting emphasis on the pen and ink language expression of the pen and ink aesthetics.
Dong Yuan's paintings have more alum heads on the top of the mountain and more gravel on the slopes, and they are felt in the real mountains and real waters, creating the method of phi ma chuan, enriching the expressiveness of pen and ink, while in the previous coloring landscapes, there are very few wrinkles and single performance. Moreover, Dong Yuan used light ink to break through its deep recesses after the method, showing a deep and profound artistic conception. It can be said that Dong Yuan is also the originator of the ink breaking technique, which has perfected the technique of landscape painting, and since then, the techniques of hooking, wrinkles, dots and dyeing have always been the only way to paint landscape painting.
In Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Pen Talk", when introducing Dong Yuan's paintings, he used his brush to be sloppy, his myopia was not similar to objects, and the distant view was the scenery and objects, and the humor was far away, such as seeing a different place." From the beginning of Dong Yuan, he can use the pen and ink with abstract imagery, emphasize the charm of the gods rather than the form, and get the spirit of the mountain, innocence, and high meaning. Dong Yuan's pen and ink performance of "intention to brush before the pen" also makes freehand a possibility for Chinese painting, and has pioneering work for the development of freehand painting.
Dong Yuan's ink painting style played a pivotal role in landscape painting, directly affecting Zhao Mengfu and the "Yuan Sijia" in the Yuan Dynasty, "Yuan Sijia" is good at ink landscape painting, with a typical literati painting style of Jiangnan interest, they are deeply inspired by Dong Yuan to push the literati landscape painting to a peak, and make the brush and ink skills of Chinese painting reach an unprecedented height, which has a huge impact on the painting of later generations, especially the "Nanzong" school. It can be said that Wang Wei's ink painting opened the beginning of literati painting, and Dong Yuan directly influenced the development of the southern landscape painting school of Chinese landscape painting with his works. In addition to the majestic and magnificent Beipai landscape style, it opened up the plain and innocent vein of Jiangnan, presenting the interests of Jiangnan literati and having a far-reaching impact. To Dong Qichang and Shen Zhou in the Ming Dynasty, the four kings and four monks of the Qing Dynasty. Until today's painting world emphasizes the interest of pen and ink, it is not unaffected by it, and it lasts for thousands of years.
Enigmatic Dong Yuan
Almighty painter?
According to the history of painting, Dong Yuan is still a generalist, in addition to landscapes, characters, water dragons, cattle and tigers are also omnipotent, according to the Qing Dynasty Qing Dynasty Wu Renchen compiled the "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" record, Dong Yuan is good at painting characters, once for Li Hou to paint the palace on the glass screen, some people mistakenly think that it is a real person and dare not enter. The Xuanhe Pictorial Notation also records that there are works with human and animal themes such as "Dragon Drama" and "Luohan Statue" in the Imperial Palace Collection. However, dong yuan has no other works in the world except landscapes, which is puzzling. However, from the point of view of the dot scene characters in his landscape paintings, the dynamics of the characters, the delicate appearance of the gods, the spirit is complete, and the non-master of character painting cannot do anything.
Identity mystery?
The official position of "Dong Beiyuan" was "Deputy Envoy of Beiyuan". What kind of official is this? One theory is that Beiyuan was the royal garden at that time, and the famous Chengxintang paper came from here, so Dong Yuan may be the official responsible for managing the work of the royal garden; there is also a saying that the Phoenix Mountain in Jianzhou, Fujian Province, the locals have always been called "Beiyuan", producing the famous tribute tea "Beiyuan Tea", the Southern Tang Dynasty once set up officials to supervise the tea collection here, and the supervising officials were called "Beiyuan Envoys". But no matter what kind of official Dong Yuan was, one thing is the same, Dong Yuan's profession is relatively leisurely, which provides a possibility for him to form a sparse and diluted painting style.
The mystery of authenticity
A few years ago, Dong Yuan's "Xi'an Map" was exhibited at the Shanghai Museum, and some experts on this painting believe that it is Dong Yuan's early works, and overseas scholars mainly based on Gao Juhan believe that it is Zhang Daqian's imitation. The author has seen the original work up close, and believes that Zhang Daqian's painting level is not yet capable of imitating it.
Regarding the surviving "Standard Pieces" of Dong Yuan's "Xiaoxiang Map", "Xiashan Map", and "Xiajing Mountain Pass To Be Crossed", the issue of authenticity is still the focus of debate in the academic circles, and it is also related to Zhang Daqian. Before Zhang Daqian's death, he wrote to Xie Zhiliu, an appraiser, saying that the three works were not authentic, and at first Xie Zhiliu did not think so, and later after in-depth research, he thought it was a forgery. Although this view is the word of a family, if it is so, the history of landscape painting will also be subversively rewritten.
Nevertheless, the mystery of history cannot prevent us from appreciating Dong Yuan—admiring the elegance of his paintings and the plain and innocent Jiangnan school of his writing. (Chen Yuncheng)