Li Song

Li Song

Li Song (1166-1243), a painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, was born in Qiantang (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang). He was a carpenter when he was young, and later became the adopted son of Li congxun, a painter in the Academy of painting. He was good at figure painting and Taoist interpretation, especially in Jiehua painting. He was appointed by Guangzong, ningzong and LiZong (1190-1264).

Li song has painted many custom paintings which show the life of the lower class, and the pictures of cattle crossing in the spring stream, the pictures of the spring society and the pictures of field clothing which show the working life of the peasants. Today, the painting of peddler is an important work handed down by Li Song. He created many pictures of peddlers with the theme of peddlers. Except for a horizontal scroll collected by the Palace Museum, the rest are small ones, which are collected in Taipei Palace Museum, Nelson Art Museum of Arken Museum in Kansas, USA, and Metropolitan Museum of art in New York, USA.

Li song has many talents, especially good at expressing his feelings and attitude towards life through painting. His paintings of night lake, water hall drawing, tide watching, West Lake drawing, Xianshan yaotao drawing, skeleton fantasy drawing, lantern watching, Liutang gathering birds drawing, flower basket drawing and so on all show his excellent painting skills. Among them, the picture of phantom skeleton left a picture puzzle for the history of fine arts with its profound implication which is not easy to be understood.

Profile

Li Song (1166-1243) was a native of Qiantang (now Hangzhou) in the Southern Song Dynasty. Born in a poor family, he used to work as a carpenter when he was young. Good painting, a long way to go. Li congxun, a court painter, accepted him as his adopted son and was awarded painting skills. He eventually became a famous painter of his generation. In the three dynasties of song Guangzong, song ningzong and song LiZong (1190-1264), the Academy of painting was waiting for the imperial edict, and people respected them as "old painters of the Three Dynasties".

The interpretation of the characters in the work painting is based on the meaning of the training, especially in the boundary painting. Figure painting is meticulous and lively; flower and bird painting is exquisite and rigorous, but it is tedious and dull; landscape painting is operated by creative craftsman, and it is attractive; boundary painting does not need boundary ruler, but the rules and ink of palace buildings are all available, which is extraordinary.

The painting themes are rich and colorful, from the palace to the folk, from the city to the countryside, from production to life, from eating and drinking to entertainment, from Xianshan to Longgong, and from history to reality. Most of the paintings reflect the rural customs and farmers' life. There are exquisite and beautiful courtyard style paintings, with more than 50 works recorded. Such as the picture of the Ming emperor fighting a chicken and the picture of the flower basket; there are folk paintings with light color, such as the picture of the peddler; there are also landscape paintings with ink rendering, such as the picture of the West Lake.

Handed down works

The works handed down from generation to generation include the volume of the painting of the peddler, the page of the painting of the flower basket, the axis of the painting of the phantom skeleton, which was made in the fourth year of Jiading (1211) and collected in the Palace Museum; the volume of the painting of the West Lake, which is collected in the Shanghai Museum; the painting of listening to Ruan, the painting of watching the lake in the night moon, and the landscape sketch painting of the water palace, which is said to be Li Song, which is collected in the Palace Museum of Taipei. Other works handed down from generation to generation include the painting of crossing cattle in Chunxi River, the painting of taking fields, the painting of picking lotus and the painting of watching tides. Later generations of painters wrote about his paintings and said: "Master Li knows the farm interest best.".

Li Song's genre paintings are more well-known. He has painted a lot of rural life genre paintings that show the life of the lower class, and described the life of the working people as an aesthetic object, which is of great significance in the history of the development of ancient Chinese art.

There are many copies of the painting of the peddler, among which the one collected in the Palace Museum is the best. This painting depicts a load carrier surrounded by children in the countryside, full of strong local flavor.

Hidden in the Palace Museum's "skeleton fantasy" axis, the character's expression is very good, the clothing pattern is small head and mouse tail, mostly straight line, thin and powerful.

Character achievement

Li Song's "the picture of the peddler" is a famous figure painting. The picture of the peddler fully describes the spiritual dynamics of the children and their mothers around the peddler, the liveliness of the children, the richness of the goods the peddler carries, and the excitement of the women and children. And painted big dogs and small dogs to set off the lively atmosphere. The painter summed up the real situation of the rural peddlers. According to records, Li song has created some realistic works. He once created 36 portraits of Song Jiang and other heroes according to the popular legend of heroes of the marsh in the Southern Song Dynasty. This is a praise for the hero rebels, which is rare in the history of painting. His painting of serving the field describes the twelve stages of farmers' productive activities. Li Song's "four mysteries" criticizes and alleges four degenerate phenomena in urban life: drunkenness, whoring, gambling and bullying, and expresses the painter's moral outlook. In addition, Li song also has a picture of skeleton with unknown meaning, and the picture of West Lake and the tide view depicting the landscape of Lin'an. The painting of watching tides does not describe the activities of human beings. It is just a scene of empty and deserted buildings and smoke trees. Therefore, people in the Yuan Dynasty think that Li song expressed his disappointment for the politics of the Southern Song Dynasty and his premonition for the collapse. His extant works include "cool in the water hall", "listen to Ruan" and "flower orchid". It is said that the painting of the gorge under the Ba boat is also his work.

Chinese PinYin : Li Song