As can be seen from the postscript, Wang Ximeng's previous paintings were "not very good" and did not meet the requirements of Huizhou temples, so he "guided them and taught them the Dharma himself". After "teaching" and understanding "its method", Ximeng created a long scroll of green mountains and rivers within half a year. Although the Miao Hui Temple is "a masterpiece", it doesn't really pay attention to it. It didn't sign the scroll with his unique thin gold book, didn't name it, and didn't make it a "masterpiece". What's more, the emperor gave this painting to Cai Jing without any care. However, the purpose of Cai Jing's inscription and postscript is to show the close relationship between the emperor and him, and there is no praise or criticism for Wang's paintings.
Seven years later, in the summer of the second year of Xuanhe (1 120), Cai Jing's "Painting Spectrum of Xuanhe" was published, which included 23/kloc-0 painters from Jin to Song Dynasty and painted 6396 axes, without mentioning Wang Ximeng at all. It can be seen that Ximeng's paintings only partially meet the technical requirements of Huisi for painting: "sketching" and "emphasizing color". As for the aesthetic content and poetic exposition of the whole painting, it can't meet the special and strict requirements of Huisi, and there are many shortcomings, so it is not particularly prominent for the famous painters who started Huisi's "painting study".
In front of the "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", there is the seal of Song Lizong's "Ji Xi Collection", which shows that this map has entered the inner government of the Southern Song Dynasty; Only one inscription (1303) was written by Li Puguang, a monk in the Yuan Dynasty. From the end of Yuan Dynasty to the end of Ming Dynasty, Wang's paintings were not paid special attention by collectors and painters, and no one commented on them. After Liang Qingbiao entered Tibet in the early Qing Dynasty, this painting was named "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". It was not until 1786 that Emperor Qianlong inscribed a poem on the painting, which was vulgar and had no reference value for discussion.
Ximeng was young when he made this picture, and his painting method inherited the aesthetic model of "nature from the outside, heart from the inside" in the Tang Dynasty, but he still didn't understand Su Shi's new model of "seeking similarity in painting and seeing his neighbors". I don't quite understand Huizong's aesthetic intention of "painting" with "poetry" and pursuing "meaning beyond painting"; Only technically, he followed Hui Zong's principle of "color doesn't hide ink", and re-applied green and heavy colors to ink brush landscapes, breaking through the heavy color painting method in the Tang Dynasty, and achieved gratifying results and was commended.
After Wang Wei's self-painted Snow Scene broke through the encirclement of heavy color realism, he advocated that painting should be based on "ink painting" and pursue the artistic conception of expressing personal simple feelings. Through the efforts of all landscape painters in the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, "ink painting" has become the mainstream of painting, and the subtle changes of the four seasons can be fully expressed only by ink color. More than 300 years later, by the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the language and grammar of ink and wash landscape painting had been completely enriched and matured. Bringing color back into the ink landscape is only a technical attempt of Hui Zong's painting innovation, and it is not absolutely necessary. Look at the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, which was finished by Wang, and return to the painting method based on ink and wash. In the painting, only the faint juice green of poplar branches is painted. Thus, in the eyes of Cai Jing, the recognition of painting techniques is only a low-level recognition, and their acceptance of Wang's paintings is free and they don't really care.