Twelfth Century Character Paintings

I. Twelfth Century Figure Paintings The Jingkang Rebellion (A.D. 1127) was the climax of the turbulent changes in the twelfth century. In Zhao Ji's reign of twenty-five years in the organization of the Academy, because of the death of the country and was broken up, exiled to Lin'an (now Hangzhou) painters and formed a new Academy.

I. Twelfth-century figure painting

The Jingkang Rebellion (12127 A.D.) was the culmination of the turmoil of the twelfth century. In the twenty-five years of Zhao Ji's reign, the organization of the Academy, because of the death of the country and was broken up, exiled to Lin'an (now Hangzhou) painters and formed a new Academy. Lin'an, a metropolis that had developed from the reign of Qian Yue in the Five Dynasties, became more prosperous and developed in the Southern Song Dynasty, inheriting and developing the tradition of Bianliang both economically and culturally and artistically. Various internal and external contradictions and conflicting factors of the Southern Song society became the basis of the life of painting art in the second half of the twelfth century. The range of subject matter of character story paintings was expanded to reflect the life of the times realistically in various ways and under different degrees.

In the Song Dynasty, especially in the twelfth century, the story painting of figures represented by the painters of the Academy of Painting, in the past, due to the prevalence of erroneous views, a long period of time to be despised. Its realistic content was called "vulgar", and its precise form of expression was called "artisanal". The prejudice generated by the erroneous idea of formalism resulted in a lack of material and in both intentional and unintentional neglect in art historical writings. Thus, today's research and discovery of Song dynasty figure and story paintings is central to a proper understanding of the development of realism in ancient pictorial art.

Two: Zhang Zeduan's Qingming Shanghe Tu

The twelfth-century painter Zhang Zeduan's Qingming Shanghe Tu is a representative work of genre painting of figures at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty. We know very little about his life now. He was originally a scholar, then studied painting, especially good at painting cars, city streets, bridges, citadels and so on, and became one of the members of the Academy of Painting in the time of Emperor Huizong. In addition to "Qingming Riverside Scroll", he also painted "West Lake Raider" (a painting of the dragon boat race at Jinming Pond in Bianjing during the Qingming Festival). Both paintings depict secular life.

The emergence of Qingming Shanghe Tu is the result of the long-term development of figure painting in the Northern Song Dynasty. Gao Yuanheng's painting of "From the driving of the two armies of the corner of the resistance theater" and Yan Wengui's painting of "Tanabata night market" became pioneers in the selection of secular life and attention to the diversity of the complexity of the performance. The Qingming Riverside Drawing, which depicts the Bianhe River, has great value as a historical document.

"Riverside Scene at Qingming" depicts the bustling scenery of Bianjing City, where the river is crowded with tourists during the Qingming Festival.

Bianhe River is not an ordinary river, or a general scenic embellishment for people to play, it played a huge role in the economic development of the Chinese society in the Middle Ages. It is the northern section of the canal opened in the era of Yang Guang, Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty at the end of the sixth century, and the canal linked the Yangtze River basin and the Yellow River basin economically and also politically. Bianliang on the river was firstly a commercial center, but also a military and political center, the capital of the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty.

The painter, with unremitting efforts and careful observation, has made a precise and detailed description of the prosperity of Bianliang City in the Northern Song Dynasty on the East Gate Street and Bianhe River outside the East Gate, and the various commercial and handicraft activities on the city street, in addition to restaurants, pharmacies and other large-scale stores, there are incense stores, bow stores, tea or wine stores at the intersection, and pawnshops with the word "Xie" on the gable. "There are also carpenters who make wheels, blacksmiths who sell knives and scissors, peach blossom vendors, and all kinds of vendors, etc. There are also fortune-tellers who travel around the world to read fortunes. There are also travelers who read faces and tell fortunes, all of which can be identified one by one. The streets were filled with all sorts of characters of all shapes and sizes. Officials rode a horse, front and back, in the crowd through; women are sitting in a small sedan chair. In the midst of all this hustle and bustle, there were people carrying burdens and driving cars (Fig. 262). There are different styles of vehicles. Some people make the boat, there are people in the Qingming Festival out to wander, in the city gate roadside with the railing leisurely look at the water.

If these descriptions can be regarded as faithful records to a certain extent, then the most striking example is the meticulous painting of the "rainbow bridge", which is a delicate structure. The bridge was described in "Tokyo Meng Hua Lu" (Tokyo Dreaming Records), which was written by a person of the Song Dynasty, as having no pillars underneath, but being built on a huge wooden frame. The method of constructing this bridge is said to have been invented by Chen Xiliang, a state official of Suzhou around 140 AD. Or said to be one hundred and thirty-two years A.D. Qingzhou, a prison pawn invented, in short, is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancient craftsmen on the construction project.

In Qingming Shanghe Tu, the painter organizes various images through many different behaviors and activities to form a complete picture: he uncovers the poetry and drama of life, and turns life into art.

As the painting gradually unfolds, the riverboats carrying grain, rice, and possessions from the south of the river appear one after another, and the tense scene of the huge riverboat passing over the Hongqiao Bridge changes the way it is told and builds up to a climax. On the boat and the bridge, many people are busy with their hands and feet, clamoring and noisy. The boat and the bridge become the center of busyness and tension. The painter is good at finding exciting factors and episodes in life, in the association and movement of things, and at finding factors and episodes rich in generalization, and at representing life in vivid images (Fig. 261).

The camel caravan, which is similar to that of the boat, is a strong impression of the economic relationship between Bianliang and Hebei, as it passes through the gate of the city, which is crowded with people.

The whole volume, in addition, we can see a lot of effect vivid program .......

The painter made a concentrated and vivid summary of the complex social activities. Although they are ordinary, ordinary trivial sections, but because the theme of the painting are colorful, rich in meaning of the link, so widely to be unfolded, so that the active medieval city life to get an artistic reproduction.

As a result of the growth of new economic factors, a growing interest in the reality of secular life arose in people's consciousness. Citizen's literature was developed, "Qingming Riverside Drawing", is the same as the citizen's literature, also expresses the great interest in the ordinary daily life, for the marketers in the marketplace, the busy and mediocre activities of all kinds of activities. Therefore, the theme and description of The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is in line with the direction of history, and touches the real height of history.

The Qingming Riverside Drawing had many copies on the market at that time, and the people of the Southern Song Dynasty who remembered the prosperity of their capital had also copied it and circulated it.

The Qingming Riverside Scrolls was originally painted by Zhang Zeduan in the Palace Museum, and was plundered by the Jin in the Jingkang Rebellion along with other paintings and drawings in the imperial collection, and then passed down to the next generation, making it one of the most important direct depictions of real life still in existence today.

Three famous figure painters of the Southern Song Dynasty

Among the famous painters of the early Southern Song Dynasty, it is the Northern Song Dynasty painters of Nandu who attracted our attention with their figure-story paintings: Li Tang, Xiaozhao, and Su Hanshen.

Xiao Zhao was a student of Li Tang, once in the Taihang Mountains as a "bandit", one day robbed Li Tang, found a famous painter, so with Li Tang south ferry, as a painter. Xiao Zhao was good at landscape painting and could paint large murals. His most famous work is "Zhongxing Ruiying Tu" **** twelve serial paintings. One of the paintings depicts the story of Zhao Gou, who went north to seek peace in 1266 A.D. and was stopped by the local people in Magizhou, Hebei Province, who killed the deputy envoy, Wang Yun, who was forced to go north, and an elderly woman coaxed away the Jin soldiers who came to search for him, so that in the end Zhao Gou was given the opportunity to return south and became the only one in the Song emperor's family who hadn't been captured, and thus became the emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty. The story depicted in the twelve paintings is a tribute to Zhao's return to the south. However, the paintings do not fully represent this historical event because they attribute the reason for Zhao's fortune to the blessing of the heavenly gods.

Another famous historical painting by Xiao Zhao is Guangwu Crossing the River, which tells the story of Liu Xiu, the Guangwu Emperor of the Han Dynasty, who risked crossing the Hutuo River on water to advance his troops during the massacre of the peasant insurgents in Hebei in the 24th year of the reign of Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty. This story is similar to the story of Zhao Gou's return to the south when he crossed a large river on ice and the ice had cracked while the men and horses were crossing, so the actual intention was to glorify Zhao Gou's re-establishment of the dynasty in the picture.

Su Hanchen and his master Liu Zonggu were both good at painting figures, and he was especially good at painting children, and as far as we know now, his works are mostly seasonal posters of the nature of New Year's paintings, and their contents are depictions of customs.

The "Cargo Man Figure", which is a detailed depiction of a peddler and his wares, showing interest in everyday trivialities, the "Five Rui Figure", which depicts an opera performance known as the "Five Flowers" in the Song Dynasty, and the "One Hundred Sons Playing in the Spring", which brings together a variety of children's games and unfolds them on the screen at the same time, are all paintings in the nature of New Year's Paintings. The "Chonwu Baby Playing", which has the same content as the "Hundred Sons Playing in Spring", is adapted to the Dragon Boat Festival. In addition, there is also a kind of children's theme paintings adapted to the Chongyang Festival. Children's themes are very common in Song dynasty custom paintings (Figure 263).

The genre paintings of Su Hanchen can be regarded as an important representative of the popular genre paintings of the Song dynasty. In addition to the subjects mentioned above, the Spring Cattle Picture of cows and the Nine Suns and Cold Picture of sheep (used for the winter solstice festival) had a fixed form. Similar to the children's theme of women's life is rich in the diversity of expression, such as: watching the lanterns (Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month), begging for coquettish (the 7th day of the 7th month) and so on.

These customary paintings reflect the psychology and hobbies of the people in feudal society in both content and form. The detailed depictions of daily utensils and the rich depictions of children's games and their imitation of adult games in the children's paintings have the effect of summarizing the reality of life at that time.

Ma Hezhi, who served as minister of the Ministry of Public Works in the early Southern Song Dynasty, was valued for his originality, as was Mi Youren. He was able to paint figures and landscapes, birds and flowers, and from the present Red Cliff can be seen that his painting method is very simple and can convey the spirit. His brushwork is soft and lively, with a special style, and the lines he used are called "orchid leaf strokes". His most famous works are the illustrations of the Book of Psalms: Binfeng Tu, Tangfeng Tu, and so on.

At the end of the twelfth century, Li Song, Liu Songnian and Chen Juzhong were highly creative figure painters.

Li Song was a painter who grew up in Hangzhou, worked as a carpenter when he was young, and was the adopted son of Li Congxun, a famous painter in the era of Emperor Huizong and Emperor Gaozong. His Cargo Figure is an important surviving work of figure painting from the Song Dynasty, which differs most from the usual Cargo Figure in that it adequately depicts the dynamics of the children and mothers attracted by the caravans, with the artist painting the mothers and children, as well as the mother dog and the puppy, the latter of which serves to emphasize the bustling atmosphere (Fig. 265 ).

According to the written record, Li Song created works that were rich in real-life significance. Li Song had created a statue of Song Jiang and thirty-six others based on the popular Water Margin Song Jiang legend of the Southern Song Dynasty. This was a tribute to heroes, rare in the history of painting. His "Picture of Serving Fields" depicts the twelve stages of farmers' production activities, starting with "dipping seeds" and "plowing", with eight lines of poems inscribed in each section. The eleventh paragraph shows the scene of the children of the rich family lying drunk in contrast to the life of the hard-working people, and the twelfth paragraph shows that the result of a year's hard work is the rent demanded by the government, and that the children cry and scream because they have no food to eat after they have paid the rent. This makes the "Serving the Field" and the general "plowing and weaving picture" have a fundamental difference in nature. Song Dynasty, "Cultivation and Weaving Figure" in A.D. 120 years had carved wooden boards, the writer is not known, the content of the working people's life is idealized, by celebrating the cultivation and weaving of labor life in order to glorify the achievements of the feudal rulers. However, it should also be recognized that works such as "Cultivation and Weaving Pictures" also reflect the importance of creative productive labor. Li Song's The Four Mystics, based on a poem inscribed by Yuan Hua in the Yuan Dynasty, criticizes the four degenerate phenomena of urban life: drunkenness, gambling, and bullying. Li Song freely handled the subject matter of life and expressed his moral attitude. In addition, Li Song's famous works include The Illusory Play of Skulls and Bones, and The West Lake Picture and The Tide-watching Picture, which depict the scenery of Lin'an.

The fragmentary material is enough to show the importance of Li Song in the development of the art of realist painting, depicting the lives of the people and their heroes, and attacking exploitation and moral corruption.

Liu Songnian, was once considered one of the four famous painters of the Southern Song Dynasty (the rest being Ma Yuan and Xia Gui) who ranked equally with Li Tang. He lived outside the Qingbo Gate in Hangzhou, commonly known as the "dark door Liu", he also specializes in green landscapes and palaces, is the standard "courtyard" painting representative of the painter.

Liu Songnian's most important work is the "Zhongxing Four Generals", which is the famous anti-Jin generals in the Southern Song Dynasty who were admired by the whole society: Liu Qi, Han Shizhong, Zhang Jun, and Yue Fei. Liu Songnian painted the painting "Seeing the Captives at the Bianqiao Bridge" to satirize the current affairs by using historical stories.

Liu Songnian painted Ploughing and Weaving, which is said to show real life customs, but most of Liu Songnian's works depicted the life of the aristocracy.

Liu Songnian's works depicting the indoor cultural life of the aristocracy can be represented by the Tang Five Bachelors. Their distinctive feature is that they focus on the characterization of the characters.

The combination of landscape painting and figure painting, focusing on the depiction of the poetic natural environment, the scholar's leisurely, enjoyable life. Liu Songnian was also one of the creators of this expression. From the titles of some of his paintings, you can tell what they are about: "Guests Talking at the Stream Pavilion", "Playing Games at the Spring Pavilion", "Visiting the Road in the Autumn Forest", "Immortal Hidden in the Spring Light", etc. Now his "Four Scenes of Landscapes" is a great example of this. Now his Four Views of Landscape (Palace Collection) is also such a work (fig. 271).

Two other surviving works by Liu Songnian are the Luohan (painted in 1207 AD), in which the natural scenery: pine trees, animals, etc. are more successful than the figures.

Chen Juzhong was a Song dynasty painter who specialized in depicting subjects of foreign life (his painting of the Four Sheep was described in the previous section).

Wen Ji Return to Han depicts the poet Cai Wen Ji, the daughter of the famous writer Cai Yong at the end of the Han Dynasty, who was taken captive by the Hu people in the chaos, and her father's friends managed to ransom her to go back to the country, but she was already married and had two children. Although she returned to the motherland, her tragic encounter, because of the "Hu Jia eighteen beat" a poem has been circulated and gained the sympathy of the ages.

Chen Juzhong is said to have made "Wen Ji Returning to Han", which depicts the scene of Cai Wen Ji saying goodbye to her husband and children, and returning to the south with the Han emissaries. It shows the calmness of Cai Wen Ji, who is suppressing her conflicting emotions, in a seated position. People are quietly waiting for their farewell. Her husband solemnly pours the farewell wine, and only the youngest child, in spite of the nanny's obstruction, goes up to embrace his mother, which becomes an important opportunity to divulge the feelings of the people in the painting. This shows that the artist is very good at mastering the emotional treatment of the characters, making it real and moving (Figure 266).

Another "Wen Ji return to Han Figure" *** four sections, the unknown painter. The four segments are: "the wilderness lodging", "Longbian diet", "son and mother separated", "return to Chang'an". The fourth segment is the most successful. Around the theme of the return, in addition to activities such as those in the courtyard when the family meets, various activities in the street outside the gate are emphatically shown. Depictions of the escorting soldiers, tired and hungry after their long journey, and the commotion in the streets, etc., reinforce the sense of realism.

And "Wen Ji returned to the Han" for the Song dynasty painters also used to express concern for the suffering of the people's subject is "Princess Ming out of the plug". Consort Ming (i.e. Wang Zhaojun) was a courtesan in the Han Dynasty, and legend has it that because she refused to bribe the painter Mao Yanshou, she was painted so ugly that when the Huns proposed marriage to her, the emperor designated her for marriage to the Huns. It turns out that the legend emphasizes the despicability of Mao Yanshou, and in Song Dynasty plays and paintings it emphasizes the moody misery of Mingfei as she travels far beyond the borders of the Seychelles.

Painter Gong Suran's "Princess Ming out of the Seaside" is also an outstanding work. In the procession marching forward in the bitter wind, Wang Zhaojun's fearless demeanor is in marked contrast to the other men hiding their faces and cowering. The cold wind symbolizes the hard living conditions in the border area.

Wen Ji Returning to the Han and Princess Ming out of the Plug depict the nomadic life in the north at that time.

Wen Ji Returning to Han and Ming Fei Out of the Seaside depict the life of nomads in the north.

One of the most successful depictions of foreigners is the Knight Returning from a Hunt. The chosen fragment and detail of the rider examining the arrow he has just plucked from his prey, while the horse is still panting with fatigue, is a powerful summary of the characterization of the life of the hunter and rider.

Liu Tang horse herding picture and Shooting picture are anonymous painters in the Song dynasty depicting the riding life of hunting works.

Four, other famous works

Song dynasty character story painting, in addition to the above combined with some of the important writers introduced, there are some anonymous painters works have been circulated. The Folding Threshold Picture, which shows a candid minister exposing a traitor, and the various cattle-herding pictures, which show the life of a shepherd boy, are quite accomplished in terms of both content and artistic skill.

The Broken Threshold Picture depicts a direct confrontation between Zhu Yun, the prime minister of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhang Yu, and Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty against the treacherous minister in the palace. Zhu Yun's hand climbs the threshold of the palace and resists the guards dragging him down, and he makes contact with the emperor's furious gaze, successfully representing this conflict. As a result, this painting has a prominent place in ancient painting (Fig. 267).

The Ox Pastoral is an extremely diverse representation of the life of a shepherd boy. Each of these segments often becomes a separate small panel, such as the Milk Cow Picture, which is rumored to be by Li Tang, the Returning to the Pasture by an unknown artist, and the Cattle Herding Picture by Yan Jiping. The painters, through continuous accumulation, have unearthed a wealth of amorous details. The in-depth experience of the pastoral life, also shows that the Southern Song painters' vision is greatly expanded in accordance with the requirements of realism.

Fifth, the achievements of the figure painting in this period

Reflecting the needs of life and customs of the production of works are the main part of the secular art of the civic class, breaking through the boundaries of elegance and secularism into the realm of art, in addition to mundane city life, figures and trivial objects, there are rural labor, heavy suffering and unlimited fun. These subjects, in the Song Dynasty, the realism of the painter's pen, to obtain a beautiful form of art, and the formation of elegant artistic style.

The painters also depicted the lives of the aristocrats according to the ideal of what the aristocrats themselves thought of as "elegance", which in fact revealed their poverty and spiritual emptiness.

The great achievement of Ancient Realist painting is centered on the breadth of subject matter and the use of high artistic skill in twelfth-century painting.