As far as the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy is concerned, the five-generation painters Dong Yuan and Juran's landscape paintings exist as "mysteries".

Although before Dong Yuan and Ju Ran, there were some problems in the history of painting. For example, the well-known Gu Kaizhi, Li Sixun, Wu Daozi, and Wang Wei had very few handed down paintings, and it was almost impossible to get a closer look. However, having said that, for those very small probability events, the direct elimination of outs seems to have little effect on the whole. The historical coordinates of Dong Yuan and Ju Ran belong to the darkness before dawn, just right in the "mist" before the border line.

Those who can't get rid of the fog are inseparable from the recent works of Dong Yuan's mountains and rivers that have been "sunned" by the museums. For example, "Xiaoxiang Picture Rolls" in the "Digital Palace" of the Palace Museum, "Xiashan Picture Rolls" and "Xiajing Mountain Pass Waiting for Pictures" in the Shanghai Museum, Liaoning Provincial Museum Cloud Exhibition Boutique, and Dong Yuan hidden in the Metropolitan Museum of New York "Creek Shore Map". Through them, the "mysterious" landscape master may be able to get out of the doubt and give the world a glimpse of the true face.

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were a period of separatist chaos in Chinese history. However, the Southern Tang Dynasty in the south corner of An'an River gathered a group of outstanding Chinese paintings. According to literature records, Dong Yuan served in the court of the Southern Tang Dynasty in the Five Dynasties. When he was the master of the Southern Tang Dynasty, he participated in the painting of the palace, but his status was not outstanding. Unexpectedly, the status behind him is getting higher and higher. After the Yuan Dynasty, he became the spiritual leader of the painting world. Any landscape painter must declare "study Dong Yuan", there are those who are dependent, and there are also innovators.

Those who are familiar with art history will immediately understand that the current art history defines "Xia Jing Shankou Waiting for Travel", "Xiao Xiang Picture Roll" and "Xia Shan Picture Roll" as Dong Yuan's dominant style, which is not accurate. The reliable information in these three volumes of paintings is the inscriptions of Ke Jiusi and Yu Ji. This is what happened in the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, the more important connoisseurs Zhao Ziang and Tang Yao had completely different descriptions of Dong Yuan.

Zhao Mengfu was very excited after seeing several authentic pieces of Dong Yuan in Yuan Da, and described the characteristics of Dong Yuan ’s large-scale green and blue paintings in detail: It is an unrestricted and free-spirited Li Sixun. Both the upper mountain and the lower frame are finely painted with waves, and they are small river boats. He can also be. "

This text has also been quoted in the past, but it has not been seriously analyzed. It contains two important messages. First, Dong Yuan's painting "is an unrestrained and unrestrained Li Sixun", that is to say, from a style point of view, Dong Yuan is not a strict painting method, which is very important. Second, "Shangjishan, Xiji", that is to say, the picture is full of paintings, this style is completely different from most Song Yuan landscape paintings, so Zhao Mengfu pays particular attention to this link. In Dong Yuan's existing style, isn't this model shown in "Hanlin Chongting Picture"?

When editing "The Complete Works of Song Paintings", the editorial team visited the Kurokawa Ancient Culture Research Institute in Japan three times in order to take a good picture of the "Hinlin Chongting Picture". However, from the details of the picture, Chinese and foreign experts still think that this is a copy of the Song people, rather than Dong Yuan's true pen.

There are several kinds of Dong Yuan's paintings in existence. Which one is the truth is obviously in the "mist." In order not to fall into a simple argument, the author suddenly thought that Dong Yuan and Ju Ran said in history that there is a commonality among them. If you can analyze Juran's paintings again, you can find more clues.

According to life experience, he became a monk in Kaiyuan Temple in Nanjing in the early years, and then Li Yu went to Jufeng in Kaifeng Temple, Kaifeng, where he was in a deeper mist. However, there are three axes of "Xishan Lan Ruo Tu", "Cheng Rong Tu Shu", "Xiao Yi Ying Lan Pavilion", which is recorded in the name of Ju Ran, but it provides rare decoding keys for future generations.

In particular, the styles and painting methods of the latter two landscapes are relatively close. The clouds in the painting reciprocate, and the ink method changes subtly, which is very consistent with the precise concept of Song painting. "Xishan Lan Ruo Tu" is a little different, because this painting is hidden in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Since the spring of 2002, the author has visited it many times. At the time it was in the preparatory stage of compiling the Complete Works of Song Paintings, the museum helped us re-capture high-quality images, and after publication, it was very clear. The initial feeling was confusion. I don't know how there are so many unfamiliar points in the painting.

However, there are so many unfamiliar points in "Xishan Lan Ruo Tu", for example, the drawing of trees is very easy, and the brushes are all loose. According to the northern painting, this is unqualified. Now, it also seems to say "no pen power"; for example, the outline of the mountain top is drawn freely with a pen, and there is a little repetition. Later generations dare not imagine that the famous giant will be so random. "Xishan Lan Ruo Tu", there are some obvious eye-catching links, for example, the light peak method of the main peak has been dragged to the middle scene, leaving no room for transition; for example, between the near and middle scenes, the rocks Close to the trees, there is no cushion, and the space is very difficult to understand from the photos.

These characteristics are completely different from the serious and compact painting methods shown in several famous works handed down from the Northern Song Dynasty, such as Guan Tong's "Guanshan Traveling Tour", Fan Kuan's "Xishan Traveling Tour" and Guo Xi's "Early Spring Touring". This makes people feel unaccustomed and full of doubts. If they are familiar with northern landscape paintings, they must be strange to "Xishan Lan Ruo Tu".

If there is no "Shangshu Provinceyin" in the upper right corner of the screen, many people may not admit that this is a painting before the mid-Song Dynasty, because it looks too easy, like the Yuan Dynasty painting. However, this seal is serious, and the texture of the painting silk is good, which makes everyone a little afraid to comment easily. The exposition of this painting in the Eighth Generation Heritage of 1980 is already the most radical discussion.

However, the two characteristics of Zhao Mengfu's description of Dong Yuan's paintings discussed above coincide with the characteristics of "Xi Shan Lan Ruo Tu", which are free from the mainstream landscape paintings of the Northern Song Dynasty.

There is a view in the academic world that Chinese literati painting began in Wang Wei and lasted for more than two hundred years when it was Dong Yuan. In the field of landscape painting, the latter not only constructs the magnificent Nanpai landscape, but also uses delicate brushstrokes to make the picture complex but not messy, concealed and elegant. If you take a closer look at the pens used in "Xi Shan Lan Ruo Tu", especially the pens used for mountain rocks, trees and buildings, it can be called "easy" and "unrestrained". The scenes in the painting are sky-high and down to the bottom of the frame. Many of the blanks commonly found in Song paintings in the middle are not there. They are full of paintings, and even the pool was scanned with light ink.

The hard-to-understand information in Dong Yuan's paintings described by Zhao Mengfu in the past was taken over one by one for "Xi Shan Lan Ruo Tu", which is very amazing information. This accidental undertaking shows that "Xishan Lan Ruo Tu" is a credible work of Dong Yuan and Juran School of Painting, and at the same time predicts that if Dong Yuan's authenticity exists, it must be such a relaxed painting method, not a similar tension painting in the north. law.

This explains why Guo Ruoxu's "Pictures and Wisdom" does not value Dong Yuan highly: because Guo Ruoxu is good at observing northern painters and speaks in the phrase "three landscapes", but he lacks appreciation for southern landscape paintings.

If we go back to Dong Qichang's famous "North and South Sect" thesis, Dong Yuan and Ju Ran have developed a relaxed style of landscape painting, which is completely different from the seriousness and grandness of the northern landscape. "Xi Shan Lan Ruo Tu" is an important authentic realm of early Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting that has been neglected because of the lack of thorough study of painting history.

(Liu Jiuzhou author art history scholar, deputy editor-in-chief of "Song Painting Complete Works")

Further reading

In the history of art, Dong Yuan "transformed" five times

Because there are many mysteries on his body, when people talk about Dong Yuan, they tend to think of him as a concept rather than an independent individual. Looking back in history, you will find that Dong Yuan's image in the history of art has undergone five changes over a thousand years, and the interpretation of each period is different.

In the first stage, about before Mi Fu, Dong Yuan had not been found to be an extremely good painter. Guo Ruoxu, an art historian in the Northern Song Dynasty, did not give Dong Yuan much good comments in "Pictures and Knowledge". It wasn't until Mi Fu highly praised him in "History of Paintings", "Tang has no such product, and he is above Bi Hong", as his Zhang Mu.

In the second stage, the late Northern Song Dynasty began to pay attention to Dong Yuan, and his entries in Xuanhe Paintings have been more detailed. However, from the recorded content, he is still an unrecognizable painter. Both the dragon and the cow paint well, and the coloring landscape is the most famous. The ink and wash landscape of "a piece of Jiangnan", which is most valued by later generations, was not mentioned.

The third stage is the first-class experts of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhao Mengfu, Tang Yao, Huang Gongwang and others. They saw some of Dong Yuan's authentic landscape paintings and described them in two styles: one is the color of "big green and big green" Landscape, the other is ink landscape. They believe that without Dong Yuan, Chinese landscape painting should be a different scene.

The fourth stage is Dong Qichang's contribution. In the late Ming Dynasty, there was no recognized authentic authentic Dong Yuan. Dong Qichang started with "Xiaoxiang Picture" and "Half-Story Jiangnan". Later, he added "Hanlin Chongting Picture" and "Longsu Suburb Picture" to Dongyuan's paintings and reconstructed his historical image And admired the grandmaster status of Nanzong in landscape painting.

In the fifth stage, the Fang family in the field of calligraphy and painting collection in the 20th century confirmed that "Xia Jing Mountain Pass to be Crossed", "Xiao Xiang Picture Scroll" and "Xia Shan Picture Scroll" were Dong Yuan's reliable styles. In the late 20th century, in the debate surrounding the rare and famous "Xi An Tu" of landscape paintings, the multifaceted image of Dong Yuan became a modern academic issue.