Xue Ji of the Tang Dynasty was the grandson of the famous official Wei Zheng. When he became the Crown Prince Shaobao and the Minister of Rites, he was known as "Xue Shaobao". Famous for his calligraphy, he was one of the four masters of calligraphy in the early Tang Dynasty. He was also good at painting figures, Buddha statues, birds and animals, trees and rocks. His crane painting was particularly vivid and was considered a masterpiece at that time. Li Bai, Du Fu and others once recited poems praising his crane painting. No paintings survive.
The "Cold Bird Picture" by Cui Bai of the Song Dynasty, the "Flower Basket Picture" by Li Peng, and the anonymous "Hibiscus Picture out of the Water".
Cui Bai's "Cold Bird Picture" depicts a group of chirping sparrows in the middle of winter, still jumping and playing on the old branches with fallen leaves. They have different moods and are full of vitality. Sparrows are active. At the same time, the painter uses the rules of formal beauty such as contrast and transformation, such as the contrast between the horizontal and straight sides of the old tree trunk and the round, soft, straight and curved shape of the sparrow, to make the work more artistically charming.
Li Song's "Flower Basket" is small in size (19.2X26.1 cm), but uses an extremely realistic technique to depict a group of flowers such as camellias, hollyhocks, and camphors in the basket. It is not only Similar in shape and full of vitality.
The unknown painting "Hibiscus Emerging from the Water" is also very small (23.8X25.1 cm), but the painting is very delicate and vivid, and it uses the boneless painting method (meaning that it does not use ink lines to outline, but directly uses color Depicting objects), the entire picture seems to be painted entirely in color, with no trace of ink lines. The light pink petals and bright yellow stamens seem to still contain the dew at dawn. The spotless, elegant and charming flower posture is the best moment for the buds to bloom. It highlights the noble character of the lotus that emerges from the mud without being stained. This is a rare masterpiece among Song Dynasty flower sketches.
The "Miscellaneous Flower Picture Scroll" by Xu Wei, a famous painter of the Ming Dynasty, is a representative work of this style of painting. The whole painting is composed of eleven parts including peony, pomegranate, lotus, sycamore, chrysanthemum, pumpkin, lentil, crape myrtle, grape, banana, plum, bamboo and narcissus. In terms of momentum, the whole painting is completed in one go, and in terms of the depiction of objects, it is perfectly executed. The changes in the shades of ink give people a sense of vigor and vitality, as well as dripping ink.
Zhu De was a famous painter in the early Qing Dynasty. He was a descendant of the royal family of the Ming Dynasty. After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, in order to escape persecution and express his hatred for the rulers of the Qing Dynasty, he became a monk, nicknamed "Badashan". people". His paintings have a strong lyrical character of borrowing objects. His "Lotus and Waterfowl Picture" shows a solitary stone standing upside down, with the remaining lotus hanging sideways. A waterfowl with its neck shrunken and its eyes glaring is squatting alone on the top of the stone. It looks extremely cold and lonely, much like the artist's self. Portrait. The entire painting is simple and concise, and the large blank space in the painting enhances the sad atmosphere of the work. As the ancients said, "Everywhere without painting is a wonderful scene."
Zheng Xie, also known as Banqiao, was a representative figure of the Yangzhou School of Painting in the Qing Dynasty. He was good at painting orchids and bamboos. His "Picture of a Cluster of Bamboo" depicts a clump of ink bamboo, old stems and newly compiled, with alternating shades, overlapping and scattered, dense and dense, strong and tall, and old and young distinct. He also wrote a long title of his own between the bamboo branches, which has a special interest.