Ma was a painter during the reign of Tongzhi and Guangxu in Qing Dynasty. He and other four students were known as "the four outstanding painters in Tianjin", and his paintings and calligraphy were well-known in Beijing and Tianjin. He is good at sketching flowers and birds, making friends with Zhang He 'an, and getting the method of coloring. Be good at imitation and be confused by the past. His flower-and-bird paintings are well known by famous artists such as Xu Xi, Wang Yuan, Lv Ji, Yuntiantian and Jiang Tingxi. Most of them describe traditional themes such as flowers and trees in the four seasons, waterfowl in the mountains and rocks on Zhu Xi's hillside, but they are unique in shaping images and artistic conception and using colors. The flowers and birds in his works are simple but not ancient, which not only maintains the neat and concise sense of reality of "courtyard style", but also reconciles the different styles of meticulous painting and freehand brushwork, painting and ink painting, and Mo Yun, a scholar who emphasizes brushwork, has changed into a stable and elegant new painting style. He is good at grasping the most distinctive scenery from different seasons, depicting vivid, natural and beautiful forms of flowers, trees and birds. His layout is meticulous, his colors are elegant, his brushwork is free and easy, and his three-dimensional sense of yin and yang is strong. The whole picture is full of lively and happy atmosphere. In the horse's flower-and-bird paintings, you can often see the inscription "imitating the command of the Royal Guards". He appreciates Lv Ji's practice of admonishing Xiao Zong with paintings, so some works deliberately depict the scene of birds snuggling up to each other in heavy snow and cold. This undoubtedly stems from Lv Ji's representative works "Snow Feather" and "Double Rainbow on Snow Shore". It can be seen that Ma also intends to hide his views on society and life in his paintings, thus enriching the ideological connotation of flower-and-bird paintings according to artistic laws. His landscape paintings are based on the blueprint and basically belong to the "Four Kings". Not only the pursuit of form, but also the use of ancient techniques combined with real scenes, flexible and changeable. The arrangement of mountains and valleys is rich in variety, turquoise and ink paintings are properly rendered, rich and smooth, and have the characteristics of neatness, stability and calmness.
Horses have extensive knowledge and cultivation. Besides painting, he is also good at poetry and calligraphy, seal cutting and fine appreciation. Seal cutting lived in Qin and Han dynasties, and calligraphy was the best at seal cutting. He is an all-round artist. Interestingly, the supplement of Biography of Paintings in Past Dynasties also mentioned that he was "an antique fool with wonderful brushwork". It is said that he once copied a flower-and-bird painting in Song Dynasty with an old silk play, but the appraiser couldn't see it was a fake and sold it at a high price. This incident aroused his interest, and he copied several pictures in succession. Meng Guanghui, a close friend and calligrapher, was invited to write sketches and engrave seals, which was even more vivid. People jokingly called it "Jinmen Dime" or "Dime Biography", and "A" and "False" were homophonic, that is, the meaning of pun "False" was quite famous at that time. This kind of works are especially cherished by collectors at that time and later generations. 19 18, Xu Shichang, who was elected as the president of Anfu National Assembly in Duan, once visited an old man in Jingu Painting Circle, but was politely refused. This old man who is not afraid of powerful people is Mr. Ma, a famous painter in Tianjin. [ 1]