Fishing Village after Autumn Rain
2 min readPainter: Ni Zan
Painting Year: the Yuan Dynasty
Material: silk scroll
Dimension: vertical length of 96 centimeters and horizontal length of 47 centimeters Collection Place: Shanghai Museum Fishing Village after Autumn Rain is a repre-sentative artwork of Ni Zan among his paintings of landscape of the Yuan Dynasty. It depicts the picturesque landscape after autumn rain, which is pained with light ink.
It shows the artistic conception of lonely space.
This artwork consists of three parts: In close view, fve or six autumn trees carry sparse branches and fewleaves. In mid-dis-tant view, large blankness shows calm and broad lake surface. In distant view, there is a flat remote mountain. Simple and desolate style is dominative in this artwork. The painter creates with scrupulous care so that profound artistic conception is ex-pressed with simple brushwork.
Brief Background
Spotting moss
Spotting moss refers to a technique of the traditional Chinese painting of landscape, which demands to use brush to spot points with different shapes so as to depict rocks, slopes, moss and grass on branches and beside tree roots, as well as remote trees on the mountains.
Bank slope is mainly depicted with Folded cun”, supplemented with Fiber-covering cun”, with light ink and dry brush. A fnishing stroke is made with thick ink for spotting moss.
Anecdote
Master Ni Zan lived a secluded life beside Taihu Lake Ni Zan was difficult to make him understood due to many strange behaviors. So people dubbed him’ Ni Yu(stubborn adherence to outworn rules and ideas)”.
Ni Zan believed in Buddhism. He made friends with monks, and visited temples for several days. Afterwards, he took faith in Quanzhen School of Taoism. In the late Yuan Dynasty, he predicted great disorder under heaven. So he distributed his wealth to friends and relatives, and then lived a secluded life beside TaihuLake. He wore bamboo hat and took a boat to foat on the lake. Nobody knew about his whereabouts, as he said goodbye to worldly troubles.
Art Master
Ni Zan(1301-1374)
Ni Zan was a famous painter of the Yuan Dynasty, who was a native of Wuxi(in today’s Jiangsu). He en joyed great poen and calligraphy skills. He was good at music. His paintings of landscape and ink bamboo were famous in China. His character and painting morality exert great influence on following generations.
Scholar painting
Scholar painting refers to the traditional Chinese painting with scholarly artistic conception.It requires some literature attainments，which often integrates poetry，calligraphy，painting and seal cutting.
It seeks after interaction between painting realm and poetic realm，advocates voicing innermost emotions and pays attention to show charm and lofty artistic style.
Remote low slopes wind up and down，without living things on it.
In the central part.large blankness shows calm and broad lake surface.
These several trees are outlined with light ink，with sparse branches and few leaves.They and look like the proud loners .
