An appreciation of Ma Yuan's landscape paintings in Song Dynasty. (Appreciate famous paintings and read stories)

It is a universally acknowledged fact that ancient Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting reached their peak in the Song Dynasty.

The landscape painting represented by Fan Kuan in the Northern Song Dynasty is a realistic technique, which pays attention to the objective description of the natural landscape and the panoramic composition. The mountains and rivers have magnificent beauty.

Landscape painting developed into a sudden change in painting style in the Southern Song Dynasty. Landscape painting represented by Ma Yuan and Xia Gui was unique, with a small landscape composition, depicting a part of a corner of a mountain and a cliff, leaving a lot of blanks on the screen to highlight the landscape. This simple and powerful composition is called "the corner scene", and Ma Yuan is also called "the corner of the horse."

From the realistic painting in the Northern Song Dynasty to the romantic painting in the Southern Song Dynasty, it depicts the mountains and rivers in the heart, which is poetic for literati.

If Fan Kuan's painting style is likened to a rugged and heroic strong man in northern Shaanxi, then Ma Yuan's landscape painting style is a gentle, agile, beautiful and capable woman in the south of the Yangtze River, who attracts people's attention and forgets to return.

Ma Yuan's well-known work "Fishing Alone in the Han River". On the open river, a middle-aged man (figuratively speaking) is fishing alone. He leans forward slightly and is absorbed. Maybe a fish is biting the hook at this time? As the fisherman sat at one end of the boat, the stern of the boat tilted slightly upward. There is no ink around the picture, but a few faint water ripples are ticked off beside the boat to show the river.

Other big pictures are blank. However, this blank shows the misty river and a strong sense of space, and highlights the word "independence", which sets off the cold and bleak atmosphere on the river and gives viewers a vast imagination space. This is what is emphasized in painting art, that is, "reality and reality coexist, and everything without painting is a wonderful place".

Jiang Xue, a quatrain written by Liu Zongyuan, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, "a hundred mountains and no bird, a thousand paths without a footprint. A little boat, a bamboo cloak, an old man fishing in the cold river-snow. " The map of fishing alone in the Han River is related to this poem, which is a poetic painting. Appreciating a poem and a painting, we can appreciate the artistic interest of "Poetry is an invisible painting, while painting is a tangible poem".

Ma Yuan's masterpiece "Trekking Map". It is an ancient painting of China, a first-class cultural relic, and is now in the Palace Museum. Light color, silk ink painting. It is 191.8 cm long and 14.5 cm wide.

"Tapping songs" is an ancient folk entertainment. People are singing and pedaling with their feet, and their movements are free and lively, which is similar to the current Tibetan Pot Dance.

"Bi Ta Ge Tu" shows the landscape paintings of the customs of the south of the Yangtze River. This painting is divided into three parts. The dangerous peaks stand in front of each other, as if several swords were straight into the sky, and the green bamboo forest and pine and cypress were hidden among the peaks.

In the quiet and beautiful mountain bend in close range, several old farmers are somewhat drunk in singing and dancing in the spring season. An old man just crossed a small bridge, holding a stick in his right hand, scratching his cheeks with his left hand, turning his body and lifting his legs, and dancing with a song, which was embarrassing.

One of the two old people accompanying him clapped his hands on the double-foot-stepping festival, while the other grabbed the former's belt, bowed and twisted, and danced beautifully. The latter walker carries a bamboo stick on his shoulder, carries a gourd on his shoulder, leans forward and bends slightly, and steps in harmony.

Four people have different dynamics but harmonious rhythm. The two children who turned their heads to look back on the left side of the long road added childlike interest to the picture, and the scene of a happy year for all ages jumped into the painting.

The gurgling streams on both sides of the long road are clear and whirling, the towering rocks stand upright, and the green Yuzhu and the colorful willows sway with the wind. Viewers feel relaxed and happy as if they can listen to the songs and laughter of farmers in the harvest year.

The middle scene is blank, misty, misty, and sometimes drizzling. The middle scene echoes the distant sky with vivid charm.

At the top of the picture, Emperor Zhao Kuo of the Southern Song Dynasty copied Wang Anshi's poem "Suyu Qingjidian, Lidi City in Chaoyang. People in good years are happy, and they are singing on the ridge. " The poem points out the theme of the painting, and it is also the emperor's hope for a bumper harvest and a peaceful and prosperous life in the Song Dynasty.

The composition of this painting is novel and unique. Although it is not Ma Yuan's usual corner scenery, it has been incorporated into the law of corner scenery in concrete treatment, and it is not known for its grandeur, but for its freshness.

The brushwork is vigorous, and the lines are smooth and beautiful. The lying stone and Xiufeng are mainly chopped with a big axe, and the distant Xiufeng is clipped with some long-drawn hemp, with dignified rocks and steep Xiufeng.

The color of the whole picture is concise and delicate, and the complicated scenery around the mountains and the six figures are skillfully arranged and interspersed, and the levels are clear and distinct, showing Ma Yuanqing's broad-minded painting style.

Ma Yuan was born in Qiantang (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province).

Ma Yuan was born in a painting family. His grandfather, grandfather, uncle, father and brother were all famous painters in the Song Dynasty. He was influenced by his family's art since childhood, and then he studied painting with Li Tang to learn from each other's strong points and finally formed his own artistic characteristics.

The most outstanding artistic achievement of Ma Yuan is landscape painting, which is unique in style and full of poetry. Ma Yuan had a great influence at that time, and was known as a unique painting academy. He was also known as one of the four schools in the Southern Song Dynasty with Li Tang, Liu Songnian and Xia Gui, and his paintings marked the characteristics of painting in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Ma Yuan's paintings are numerous, but only a handful have been handed down so far. Large-scale works such as Walking Songs, Birds in Meishixi, Looking at the Stone Wall from a Distance, Listening to Autumn in a Shelf, etc. are collected in the Palace Museum, and some small genuine works are collected by museums in Taipei, Shanghai and the United States, and a small number of works are scattered in the hands of private collectors.

It's not easy to see Ma Yuan's works in the market, and occasionally collectors come up with deals. In 1986, Sotheby's in new york auctioned off Ma Yuan's Ten Books of Bi Shan Shui, which was a silk edition and sold for $319,.

"The mountains are empty and poetic". If you compare Ma Yuan's landscape painting style to the "Xizi" in the south of the Yangtze River where "heavy makeup is always appropriate", have you been reluctant to return?