Yuan Dynasty, Zhao Mengfu, scroll, color on silk, length 26.4 cm, width 100 cm, collected by the Palace Museum.
This picture depicts the scene of a herdsman driving a group of horses to the river bank to drink water in the countryside in early autumn. The ten horses are strong and fat, some are chasing each other on the bank, some are walking into the river to drink water, and some are playing with each other. The herdsman was dressed in red robes and holding a riding crop, looking sideways at the two horses playing. The shore is surrounded by trees and the lake is gentle and waveless.
Zhao Mengfu was a master of pommel and horse painting in the early Yuan Dynasty. His painting masters were the Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty Li Gonglin. This painting is a representative work of his pommel horse paintings. The lines are round and thin, sometimes with twists and turns and changes in thickness. The details of the work are loose and elegant. The coloring is elegant and the painting is large-scale, without scratching or smearing. The composition is full, the distance, middle and close shots are clearly layered and balanced. Although the objects are specific and subtle, the whole is extremely simple.
Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), whose courtesy name was Zi'ang, was also known as Taoist Songxue. A native of Wuxing, Zhejiang, he is a descendant of the Song Dynasty clan. He was a teenager when the Southern Song Dynasty was destroyed. He later served as an official in the Yuan Dynasty and reached the first rank. He is said to have been "prosperous in five dynasties and famous all over the world". He is politically prominent, but he is often jealous of people in the ruling group. He was also ridiculed by his contemporaries, so he spent his life in guilt and contradiction. In terms of art, Zhao Mengfu was a pioneer of a generation. He is proficient in music, good at appraisal, and good at poetry and prose, especially calligraphy and painting. He has very high attainments and is very comprehensive. He proposed that paintings should have "ancient meaning" and advocated the incorporation of calligraphy into paintings. He was a leader in the painting circle in the early Yuan Dynasty, and his influence affected the four great masters of the Yuan Dynasty and even some masters of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.