The outstanding representative of Huating School is Dong Qichang.
Dong Qichang, born in Huating, Songjiang, was a painter in the Ming Dynasty. In the seventeenth year of Wanli, at the invitation of the Hanlin Academy, he went to Nanjing as the minister of rites. After his death, he was named Wen Min. Dong Qichang is an outstanding representative of Huating School, who is good at painting landscapes. His paintings are delicate and neutral, quiet and spacious, clear and clean, bright and blue, green and elegant. He used Buddhism and Zen as a metaphor for painting and advocated the theory of "Southern and Northern Schools".
when Dong Qichang was 17 years old, he took the Songjiang government examination. At that time, he wrote a very proud eight-part essay, thinking that he would win the championship, but when he published the list, he was inferior to his cousin Dong Yuanzheng. The reason is that Songjiang Magistrate Zhong Zhenji thinks that the handwriting on his test paper is poor, and although the article is good, it can only be ranked second. This incident greatly stimulated Dong Qichang, and he made a determined effort to learn calligraphy.
The significance of Huating School
The so-called "Hua Tingpai" mainly refers to a group of landscape painters around Dong Qichang. Their aesthetic thoughts and painting styles are generally consistent, and they are collectively called Hua Tingpai. Dong Qichang, proud of his official career, is a senior official of the Ministry of Rites. In calligraphy and painting, he made great achievements, not only as a representative painter of Hua Tingpai, but also as a leading figure in painting in the late Ming Dynasty, and his influence spread to more than 3 years after the end of Ming Dynasty.
The appearance of Hua Tingpai marks the revival of literati painting tradition. We know that the development of painting history after Yuan Dynasty, Zhejiang School and other painting schools after Wanli, as far as wu school is concerned, is not very pure in nature. Its team has mixed painters, such as Chou Ying.
Even literati painters often regard painting as a tool to make a living, making their own creation a commodity that is appreciated by refined and popular tastes, so that in the construction of painting discipline, they will not hesitate to shake the dominant position of landscape as a large and orthodox literati painting. This is one of them.
For reference, Baidu Encyclopedia-Dong Qichang