There are seven paintings and there are nine paintings, and they are all correct. Because the Kangxi Dictionary gives the character "Yan" in both orthographic and variant forms.
The traditional Chinese character "Yan" is the one we use now, which has seven strokes, while the opening character to the right of "姸" in the variant script is two "Qian", so it has nine strokes. Yan is a Chinese character, pronounced yán, and is generally interpreted as beauty, such as Yangai (beautiful and ugly), where hundreds of flowers bloom. It can also be interpreted as clever, such as Yanjie.
Variant characters are a group of characters that are written in a way other than the traditional Chinese characters. The pronunciation and meaning of the characters are the same but the shapes of the characters are different. Since Chinese characters are composed of meaning symbols, musical notes and symbols, the angle of selecting the meaning symbols varies from person to person, and the musical notes are different from the letters in Pinyin text. Therefore, the phenomenon of multiple shapes in one character is very common, which is not the same as traditional Chinese characters.
Extended information:
Commonly used phrases
1. Yanchī:
(1)? Beautiful and ugly.
Example: Yanyuan cannot tell.
(2) Also called "Yanchi".
Yan refers to beauty; Chi refers to ugly appearance.
2. Yanli (yánlì): beautiful; pretty.
Example: Beautiful peonies.
Baidu Encyclopedia——Yan?
Baidu Encyclopedia——Various characters