The reason why ancient China literati are willing to compare with Mei Lan and Zhu Ju is mainly because their cold-blooded, self-admiring, cold-fearing nature conforms to the noble character pursued by literati. In fact, these four kinds of flowers and trees, Mei Zhu Lan Ju, were regarded as symbols of character by China literati before the Song and Yuan Dynasties. For example, in Lisao, Qu Yuan took advantage of orchids, and there were Ruan Ji, Ji Kang and other "seven sages of bamboo forest" in the Jin Dynasty. Wang Xianzhi can't live without bamboo for a day. Tao Yuanming was obsessed with chrysanthemums, and Wang Wei and Li Shangyin both left Yongmei's famous saying: "You people from my old country, tell me what happened there! . When you passed my window, did the plum blossom bloom its first cold flower? ? "(Wang Wei)" Set in the horizon, willing to turn to things. Hanmei is the most hateful and grew into a flower last year. " (Li Shangyin)
It was in the Song and Yuan Dynasties that Mei Zhulanju really became the theme of painting art. In the literati paintings of the Song Dynasty, the theme of four gentlemen began to form and spread. Su Shi's bamboo, monk, Yang, plum blossom in Zhao Mengfu, chrysanthemum in Yang Chong and orchid in Zhao Mengfu were all praised by people at that time. Among them, Zhu Mo and Mo Mei are the most famous. Wen Tong was a representative figure of Mo Zhu in Song Dynasty. He is Su Shi's subordinate cousin, and Su Shi called him the four wonders of poetry, ci, calligraphy and painting. His ink bamboo is fresh and natural, with both form and spirit. For example, in the Ink Bamboo Map, a bamboo tip hangs upside down in the upper left corner of the picture, which is called "broken branch" in composition. The bamboo leaves in the picture are covered, and the bamboo joints and leaves are very realistic. The difference between the Xun Mei map of the new leaf and the old leaf is clearly visible, and it is not a static bamboo branch. However, because of the bamboo in the wind, it can be seen that the painter's observation is fine and his experience is profound. In terms of technical performance, Wen Tong pioneered the painting of bamboo leaves. He painted leaves with thick ink and leaves with light ink, with distinct layers. The bamboo on the paper is full of vitality and distinct charm. Su Shi praised Wen Tong for painting bamboo, saying that "painting bamboo must be in the chest first", and the idiom "having a plan" came from this. The explanatory text is familiar with bamboo. When painting, you don't copy bamboo, but write the clear and vivid bamboo shadow in your brain directly on paper. At the same time, Wen Tong's bamboo painting is a combination of body and bamboo, and all his personality and temperament are attached to bamboo painting. Su Shi described Wen Tong's painting of bamboo as seeing bamboo but not seeing people: "His body and bamboo are infinitely fresh." It is this creative state that people and bamboo are integrated. From Wentong's ink and bamboo drawings, it seems that the painter's elegant style can be clearly felt.
Compared with Wen Tong, Su Shi's freehand brushwork is very obvious, which is also in line with his free and frank personality. The picture of dead wood and bamboo stone depicts a crooked dead tree, a stubborn stone with two or three small bamboos sticking out irregularly behind it. The shapes of dead trees and stubborn stones are twisted and strange, from stone to tree, in one go, which seems to contain a sense of stagnation. Painting does not pay attention to form, but to control the pen. Bamboo, stone and tree are all contained in Su Shi's mind, exuding the elegance of human nature.
Yang Wuqi is good at drawing plum blossoms. It is said that he once "planted several plum blossoms" in his place of residence. Whenever flowers bloom, he sleeps under the plum tree. When he saw the thin shadow of plum branches reflected in the window on a moonlit night, he wrote a picture. From this, the plum painting samadhi was obtained, and its plum painting was also famous for a while. The petals of plum blossoms painted by predecessors are all painted with ink halo. Plum blossoms are black, but they will be changed without blame. He drew the outline of petals with ink lines, which made plum blossom turn from black to white, which not only appeared concise, but also showed the characteristics of plum blossom. The existing "Simitu" is his masterpiece, which depicts four states of plum blossom: germination, blooming and withering, and shows the whole process of plum blossom from germination to withering. There are not many flowers on each plum branch, and the new branches are graceful. They are all written in a straight line, with thick branches and sharp paintings, rubbed by the method of flying white, rich in texture and ink painting.
In the process of the flourishing theme of Four Gentlemen, Song Boren in the Southern Song Dynasty created the first woodcut plum score "Plum Blossom and XiShen Score". "XiShen" is a common saying in Song Dynasty, which means portrait. In this plum blossom book, Song Boren drew 100 plum blossom pictures, which completely covered the whole process of plum blossom growth. And each picture is accompanied by a title and a five-character quatrain. The combination of poetry and calligraphy presents the style of literati painting.
Zheng Sixiao's cymbidium was unique in the Southern Song Dynasty. After the death of Song Dynasty, he lived in Suzhou and often used poetry and painting to express the pain of national subjugation. He painted Chinese cymbidium and never painted soil, creating a unique painting method of "Lu Genlan", that is, painting roots because the soil was fanned away, which is a typical lyric. Moran placed the painter's infinite affection for the motherland on the paper.
The painters who painted ink bamboo in Yuan Dynasty accounted for almost half of the total number of painters. Gao, Zhao Mengfu, Guan Daosheng, Gu 'an, Ke, Xie Tingzhi, Zhenwu, Ni Zan and Wang Meng are all famous ink and bamboo painters. Because the literati painting in Yuan Dynasty has reached maturity, Zhu Mo's painting method is more obvious. Ke Jiusi clearly put forward: "Dry calligraphy is based on seal, branches are based on cursive script, leaves are based on eight points, or Lu Gong's brushwork is used, and wood and stone are based on gold hairpin, which leaks." Zhenwu's ink bamboo was painted with cursive brushwork, and Ni Zan used bamboo to "write the escape in the chest".
The beauty of Mo was also brand-new in the hands of Wang Mian in Yuan Dynasty. Wang Mian once aspired to a career, but failed repeatedly. Later, he made a living by selling paintings, and his behavior gradually became grotesque, which actually implied his resentment against reality. Wang Mian has a soft spot for plum blossoms, leaving a lot of Yongmei's poems, "The solitary plum blossoms are as handsome as lovers in the empty valley. Peach and plum are different, you don't know that spring is beautiful. " "Don't boast about the good color, leaving only the dry Kun in the air." The plum blossom in his works has long been a symbol of noble personality, and because of this, his Mei Mei paintings are full of rich literati feelings. Wang Mian's Mo Mei inherited and developed the painting without guilt circle. When drawing a petal circle without guilt, three ups and downs are required, but Wang Mian changed it to two ups and downs, and later generations copied Wang Mian's method. Wang Mian also created "Rouge as Boneless Body", which was touched with cinnabar to make plum blossoms fresh and gratifying. At the same time, he changed the characteristics of previous painters describing plum blossoms, and was known as "a family of thousands of flowers" because he was good at hiding plum blossoms. Masterpieces such as "The Beautiful Plum Map" show numerous white plum blossoms from the upper right corner, such as thousands of jade beads on the branches, and five poems by Wang Mian. A cloud said, "Wan Li is clear, but it's hard to get into the sky. My virginity is chilling, and only heaven and earth know. " The painter's noble mentality is accompanied by Mei Duo's painting, which makes this painting vivid and unforgettable. Wang Mian's Mo Mei had a direct influence on Xu Wei's freehand brushwork of flowers and birds in Ming Dynasty and the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou in Qing Dynasty.
Most literati painters are cynical. They use freehand brushwork to pour out their frustrations, and use landscapes, flowers and birds to relax and enjoy themselves, thus creating a detached and refined temperament. People in the Tang Dynasty advocated peony, while people in the Song Dynasty preferred plum blossom, which reflected the glory of the Tang Dynasty and the poverty and weakness of the Song Dynasty. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the peony symbolizing wealth and prosperity became the aesthetic sustenance of the Tang people. Compared with the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty is a weak and declining dynasty, and the sensitive literati who have lived in internal troubles and foreign invasion for a long time have increasingly strong respect and admiration for the self-improvement, aloof and noble plum blossom. Therefore, the "four gentlemen" in Huajian Collection has become more and more a medium for literati to metaphor their ambitions.
Art is the best embodiment of the aesthetic orientation of the times. The popularity of Mei Zhulanju in literati paintings since the Song and Yuan Dynasties is just enough to illustrate the aesthetic feelings of the literati class after the Song Dynasty. Numerous literati have pinned their lonely and noble hearts on these four kinds of flowers and trees. In their works, these four kinds of flowers and trees are no longer pure natural images, but metonymies of personality, quality, ambition and emotion, which not only embodies the literati's elegance in poetry and painting, but also contains the complex of home and country that is hard to get rid of. It is based on this artistic creation spirit of subjective externalization and self-expression that Mei Zhulanju has become an eternal aesthetic image and creative theme in China literati paintings.