Wu Changshuo loved painting plums all his life, calling himself a "bosom friend of bitter railway people". He called painting plums "sweeping plums". The word "sweep" just appropriately reflects the characteristics of the painter's painting plum. "Writing seal script is natural to learn from it." He advocated painting plums to gain quaint and cold interest. There was a poem saying, "It took a lot of pen and ink to learn to paint plums for thirty years. When you are drunk, you will get angry and spit coated paper. Surfers laugh, and wine is made of flowers. The law doubts the sacred biography of the grass and captures the anger of Tianchi. " This poem embodies the painter's breakthrough in ancient law and his open mind. The ancients said, "Tang people are smart, Song people obey the law, Yuan people love, and Ming and Qing dynasties are still changing." From this painting, we can fully feel Wu Changshuo's artistic pursuit of "breaking the ancient law vertically and horizontally". Its Jiao Mo is colorful, and the old pen is full of flowers. As the saying goes, "pen to dragon and snake, both sides meet the source." Finally, the painter wrote a few lines in the upper left corner of the fan, with a dignified pen and ink, and stopped writing. At this point, the picture has formed a pattern of wide opening, large closing and dense, which makes the space close at hand radiant and full of lyrical and freehand brushwork, flaunting the freehand brushwork spirit of China's painting, distancing itself from all painters in history and forming its own unique language characteristics. Wu Changshuo once said: "It's easy to pick up a small skill, but difficult to pick up a creator. If you want to get married, you have to work hard for at least half your life. " This reflects his profound understanding of artistic innovation.
Wu Changshuo (1844— 1927), whose real name is Jun Qing, is from Anji, Zhejiang. Wu Changshuo was born in a scholarly family, and his grandfather and father were both born in juren. He likes chanting and seal cutting since he was a child. In his thirties, he began to learn painting and asked Ren Yi for advice. It was not until he was 40 years old that he was willing to show people by painting. It can be said that it takes ten years to sharpen a sword. His paintings draw on Xu Wei, Badashanren, Shi Tao, Shan Li, and Zhao Zhichang, integrating poetry, calligraphy, painting, and printmaking into one furnace, becoming the representative of the "sea painting school".
Wu Changshuo, Xu Gu, Pu Hua and Ren Yi were also called "four outstanding Shanghai scholars" in the late Qing Dynasty. Wu's inheritance and innovation of freehand flower-and-bird painting directly influenced many outstanding artists in modern times. Qi Baishi once wrote a poem: "The green vine is far from embryo: the old people are old." I want Jiuyuan to be a running dog, and the three families will get the next round. He juxtaposed Wu Changshuo with Xu Wei and Badashanren, which shows the historical position of Wu Changshuo in China's flower-and-bird painting. At the same time, Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, Huang and Pan Tianshou are also known as the four famous painters in China in the past century.