Flower and bird Painting in Qing Dynasty

Flower-and-bird painting gained great achievements in Qing dynasty. Painters learned from both ancient painting tradition and western painting skills. The subject matters, ideology and taste as well as the painting skills were all developed in this period. There were abundant ways of manifestation in paintings. In early Qing dynasty, Yun Shouping excelled in flower-and-bird painting besides landscape painting. He created a new way of flower painting called “skeletonless painting”. He attached great importance to the observation and personal experience with the flower to be depicted and could imitate the real image of flowers with lifelikeness. He used his brush pen freely and ink color in an elegant and unrestrained way. Among the Four Monks, Zhu Da and Shi Tao were good at both landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting. Their works were with strong individuality and profound meaning, which had direct impact on the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou.

Most members of the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou were born and lived in the middle and lower class of the society. They all had their unique personality and emphasized personal style in art. They were good at flower-and-bird painting. They liked to paint plum blossom, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum, which advocated their moral nobleness and chasteness. In artistic form, they inherited from Chen Chun, XuWei, Zhu Da and Shi Tao’s creative styles and painting skills. They used water inkfreestyle painting to put into full play the power of brush pen and water ink in image shaping and sentiment expressing. Their painting styles were free, unconstrained and full of expressive power, which endowed flower-and-bird painting with a higher artistic level.

In late Qing dynasty, the Shanghai Painting School in Shanghai was representec by Zhao Zhiqian, Xu Gu, Ren Xiong, Ren Bonian, Pu Hua, Wu Changshuo. They mainlypainted human figures, flowers and birds. On the one hand, they inherited the tradition and believed that painting and calligraphy had the same origin. They blended characteristics of calligraphy, seal cutting, metal and stone inscription into paintings. On the other hand, they learned from western painting techniques like the use of color and change of hue, which brought novelty into flower-and-bird painting and cast great influence on the development of pre-modern and modern Chinese painting.

Important flower-and bird painters in Qing dynasty include: Zhu Da, whose flower-and-bird painting was much more famous than his landscape painting. His life was full of difficulties so he expressed all his anger and sorrow in life in his painting, calligraphy, poems and prose. In his flower-and-bird painting he used definite strokes with strength, asymmetric arrangement, symbol, exaggeration and allegory technique to shape the cool, simple and particular flower and birds’ images. Birds under his brush pen were usually aloof and proud with supercilious look, which revealed his personality and ways of thinking. Besides, he usually signed his painting with the pen name “Ba Da Shan Ren”in shape of characters meaning”cry over something”or “laugh at something”, which demonstrated his cynical thought and his painful feeling for the loss of country and family. His representative works were Peony and Peacock and Flower on the River, etc.

Shi Tao, who was both well known for his landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting, liked to paint orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, lotus and plum flower. He used his brush pen in a free and easy way and used the colors as freely as he thought without any restraint. His representative works were Water Ink Lotus, Chrysanthemum and Bamboo, Chrysanthemum and Rock, etc.

Yun Shouping(1633-1690) was originally named Yun Ge, with courtesy name Shouping which was changed to Hang and to Zhengshu later. He had the pseudonym ofNantian, Baiyun Waishi and Ouxiang Sanren. He was born in Piling (Wujin in Jiangsu today) and moved to Changzhou in his senior years. He had joined the anti-QingStraggle when he was young, and later he lived on selling his calligraphy and paintings. He first learned landscape painting and in his middle age he started to learn flower painting. He had learned from Shen Zhou, Lu Zhi and Sun Long, etc.

Based on ancient painting and painting development of his time, he created a new way of flower painting called”skeletonless flower painting”, in which there was no need of sketching the figure with lines before adding colors. Colors were direct1y used to shape images. It seemed that the flower was without skeleton, yet the skeleton emerged from behind the colors. In his paintings the shape was accurate; the image was lifelike; and the brush pen for color was used in free and easy way. The style was really elegant and with gentle beauty. His painting had great impacton contemporary painters. As his followers became more and more, Changzhou Painting School came into being. They had many paintings handed down since then.

The Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou refer to a group of active painters in Yangzhou in middle Qing dynasty. Eight was not the exact number. There were more painters known as member of the Eccentrics, including Jin Nong, Luo Pin, Li Fangying, Li Shan, Huang Shen, Zheng Xie, Gao Xiang, Wang Shishen, Hua Yan, Gao Fenghan, Bian Shoumin, Min Zhen, etc. With their personalized paintings, they really vitalized the increasingly weary painting field. Among them, Hua Yan, Li Shan, Zheng Xie and JinNong were the most representative ones. Hua Yan was good at landscape painting, figure painting, flower-and-bird painting and made great achievements in all of them. His flower-and-bird painting first followed Yun Shouping’s style, which was elegant and shaped with preciseness. Later he followed Zhu Da and Shi Tao, etc. and learned their free way of using brush pen and diversified lifelikeness. And he finally formed his special small freestyle flower-and-bird painting style which was clear, elegant with light and beautiful color, vivid with lifelikeness and diversified configurations. This style had influenced pre-modern and modern flower-and-bird paintings greatly. Li Shan first learned landscape painting and later followed Jiang Tingxi and Gao Peiqi after he entered the court.

When living in Yangzhou, he gained influence from Shi Tao. Paintings in his earlier years were with preciseness and confined in rules. Yet after he became a middle aged man, he could use his brush pen in a bolder and unconstrained way and created paintings which were out of confinement, vigorous and full of sentiment. Zheng Xie excelled in poetry and prose, calligraphy and painting. He combined sem cursive, regular script and clerical script into his own calligraphy and named it Six and Half script, which was known as in shape of riprap on the street. He was especially good at painting orchid and bamboos. He believed that painting should be learned from nature and importance should be attached to the abstraction and processing of artistic images. He said “the bamboo in your mind is different from the bamboo in your sight”and “the bamboo you paint is different from the bamboo in your mind”. His paintings were influenced greatly by Shi Tao, Xu Wei and Gao Qipei.

He used brush pen vigorously and freely, and arranged painting in a simple, clear and natural way. He added postscript poem or prose to express his thought and sentiment, which exalted the connotation of his painting.

Shanghai Painting School was represented by Xu Gu, Zhao Zhiqian, Ren Xiong, Ren Bonian, Pu Hua and Wu Changshuo. They moved to the biggest industrialized and commercial city Shanghai at the end of Qing dynasty and made their living in selling paintings. To meet the new civic aesthetic taste, they combined into their paintingsthe traditional painting style, metal and stone inscription characteristics and the color use and hue changing techniques in western painting especially water color painting, which made traditional flower-and-bird painting more expressive and with more aesthetic connotation. This also promised the innovation of Chinese painting in pre-modern and modern times.

The painting styles of different painters in Shanghai Painting School varied greatly: Xu Gu(1824-1896) was good at figure portrait, landscape, flower-and-bird paintings. His flower-and-bird paintings followed Hua Yan’s style. He liked to paint plum blossom, chrysanthemum, bamboo, pine and goldfish, squirrels and cranes. He used dry and reversed strokes and shaped images with inconsecutive lines. The shape was usually exaggerated yet vivid and lifelike. The colors used were light, clear and with classic elegance and lingering charm.

Zhao Zhiqian(1829-1884) was a master of calligraphy, seal cutting and painting. He was highly accomplished in all of the above art form. In painting he was well up in flower and landscape paintings. In his flower painting he added characteristic of metal and stone inscription and used his brush pen in a strong and imposing, bold and unconstrained way, which had great influence on pre-modern and modern paintings.

Ren Bonian(1840-1895) was well up in figure painting, landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting. His flower-and-bird paintings followed styles of different painters in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and also learned ways of manifestation from western water color painting. He could paint well different kinds of flower-and-bird paintings, including both meticulous style and freestyle paintings. He was also good at using sketching, colors and skeletonless painting techniques. His painting not only demonstrated his traditional painting skills, butalso with fresh, vivid and lively novelty. He formed a new style of flower-and-bird painting which had impact on pre-modern and modern flower-and-bird paintings.

Wu Changshuo(1844-1927) was good at poem and prose writing, calligraphy, seal cutting and painting and made great achievements in each field. In painting he excelled in landscape painting, figure painting and flower-and-bird painting. His flower paintings were the most well known. He liked to paint plum flower, chrysanthemum, vine, pine, bamboo, lotus, daffodil, peony, vegetable and fruit. He used thick and strong strokes and imposing lines as well as diversified ink colors.

The colors of his painting were heavy, bright yet with classic elegance. The configuration of picture was diversified. He combined the art of poetry, calligraphy, seal cutting and painting together and pushed the great freestyle flower-and-bird painting to its highest peek of development.