What new technique did Zhao Mengfu utilize in his painting Ancient Wooden Scattered Horses?

Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), courtesy name Zi'ang, was known as Songxue Daoren, among others. He was a native of Wuxing (present-day Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province). He was the eleventh grandson of Zhao Kuangyin, the Great Ancestor of Song, and a descendant of Zhao Defang, the King of Qin. Late Song and early Yuan officials, painting horse everyone, erudite and versatile, able to poetry and good literature, understand the economy, work calligraphy, fine painting art.

All his life, Zhao Mengfu painted a large number of works with horses as the subject matter, such as Bathing Horses, Drinking Horses in the Autumn Countryside, and People Riding Pictures, etc. His style of horse painting originated from the lineage of Li Gonglin of the Song Dynasty, and on the basis of drawing on the merits of his predecessors, he created a generation of new styles of the literati horse, and advocated that: "Noble painting is characterized by an ancient sense of meaning". His horse paintings are mostly a combination of horses and natural environment, with a strong flavor of life and the ancient style of literati.

The Ancient Wood and Scattered Horses is the most personal of Zhao Mengfu's surviving works of the Yuan Dynasty. Created in 1269, it is an ink painting on paper, 29.8cm longitudinally and 71.7cm horizontally, and is now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The painting is made purely in ink with two ancient trees and two steeds. Although the painting is a combination of horses and ancient trees, it shows the spirit of the literati and has the flavor of lightness, dust removal, and sentimentality. Ancient trees, one gnarled, the other spreading, contrasting with each other; a horse is leaning down on the side, a horse is in front of the head, are more difficult to paint the posture of the horse, depicted accurately and relaxed. The painting technique of Gumu Scattered Horses is very different from the traditional horse paintings of previous masters, which are neither strictly work-brush paintings nor pure white paintings, but more like ink and wash paintings or literati paintings with small brushstrokes.

This painting uses simple and plain thin lines and light ink to outline the form, which is different from the traditional brush painting's outlining, and is characterized by randomness, reflecting the author's new concept of Chinese painting, such as to use calligraphy in painting and to use painting to send out the meaning of the painting. The rendering is also different from the traditional painting of horses, with light ink and withered brush strokes to carve the fine structure, with chapping instead of coloring. The painting is drawn by white drawing method with light ink and sassafras, the brush is ancient and strong, smooth and powerful, permeated with a kind of rusty and distant atmosphere, with strong characteristics of the literary horse.

This new horse painting technique of "Ancient Wood and Scattered Horses" was favored by the literati once it was introduced. The systematic evolution of the art of Chinese horse painting from the traditional style of the Tang and Song dynasties to the literati style of freehand painting began in the Yuan dynasty, and it was Zhao Mengfu who initiated this change. His ideas on Chinese painting, such as "Painting with an ancient intent", "Creation is the master", "Painting and calligraphy are originally the same", and "How can one write faraway sorrows without the use of the Danqing brush? "The concepts of Chinese painting have had a profound impact.