Ni Zan

Ni Zan

Ni Zan (1301-1374) was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. He was a painter and poet in the late Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty.

He was good at landscape painting and ink bamboo painting. He learned from Dong Yuan and was influenced by Zhao Mengfu. In his early years, the style of painting was simple, while in his later years, the reform was plain and naive. Sparse forest slope bank, you Xiu Kuang Yi, pen simple meaning far, cherish ink as gold. The side front dry brush is used for texturing, which is called "folding band texturing". Ink bamboo has a posture, a few strokes, Yi Qi Hengsheng. Calligraphy from the official script into the Jin style, but also good at poetry. Hongwu died in the seventh year at the age of 74.

Ni Zan, together with Huang Gongwang, Wang Meng and Wu Zhen, is known as the "four schools of Yuan Dynasty". Ni Zan's family is rich, erudite and good at antiquity, and famous people from all over the world often visit his family. In the early years of the reign of Emperor Shun of the Yuan Dynasty, he scattered his wealth and wandered in Taihu Lake. The surviving works include Yuzhuang Qiuji painting, Liujunzi painting, rongxizhai painting and qingkaige collection.

Life of the characters

His grandfather was a big landlord in his hometown. He was rich and rich. Ni Zhaokui (literally Wenguang), the first half brother of the same father and three brothers, was an upper class figure in Taoism at that time. He once "declared the record of Changzhou Road", "mentioned the affairs of Kaiyuan Palace on Hangzhou Road", "gave the name of element God Ying chongdao mage to raise the point for the host", and "specially gave a real person name, a pure white real person in Xuanzhong culture" Second brother (compatriot) Ni Ziying. In the Yuan Dynasty, the top figures of Taoism were in a high position and had various privileges. They had neither the hardship of labor tax nor the burden of officialdom, but had extra ways to make money. He was brought up by his elder brother and lived a very comfortable and carefree life. Ni Zhaokui invited his fellow countryman Wang Renfu to be his tutor. Influenced and educated by such a family, Ni Zan developed an unusual attitude towards life. He was aloof and aloof. He didn't care about politics and didn't want to manage production. He called himself "lazy Zan", also known as "Ni yuan". He was immersed in poetry and painting all the year round, which was quite different from the Confucian ideal of joining the world, so he became an official at the end of his life. They are clean and clean. They are washed several times a day, and the trees around the house are often washed. Thousands of volumes of books are collected at home, and they are assigned by hand. Although Ni Zan had a rich family and a good life as a teenager, he didn't catch the dandy habit and paid close attention to his study and cultivation. At home, there is a three story library called "Qingkai Pavilion", which contains more than 1000 volumes of scriptures, history, Zi, Ji, Buddhist scriptures and Taoist books. Ni Zan read and wrote poems upstairs every day. Besides carefully studying Classics, he also dabbled in Buddhist and Taoist books. There are also famous calligraphic paintings of all dynasties in the "Qing Dynasty Pavilion", such as "Jian Ji Zhi Biao" by Zhong Yao of the Three Kingdoms, and "Hai Yue an Tu" by Mi Fu of the Song Dynasty. Ni Zan plays with these masterpieces day and night and imitates them, especially Dong Yuan's Xiaoxiang, Li Cheng's Maolin yuanxiu and Jing Hao's Qiushan. At the same time, he often goes out for sightseeing and describes valuable scenery and things at will. He carefully observes various phenomena in nature and seriously paints from life. When he returns home, he is always full of paintings. On the one hand, Ni Zan paid attention to inheriting traditional techniques, learned from various schools, and studied diligently, which laid a solid foundation for his later innovation in painting. In 1328, his eldest brother Ni Zhaokui died suddenly. Later, his mother Shao and teacher Wang Renfu died one after another, which made Ni Zan sad. Ni Zan became an ordinary Confucian family, and his family economy was increasingly difficult. With a sad mood, he wrote his own poems about his painful environment at that time. The 20 years from 1330 to 1351 is the mature period of Ni Zan's painting creation. During this period, Ni Zan had extensive communication with monks, Taoists, poets and painters. Most of his poems are written in concert with this kind of people. His best friend, Zhang Boyu, was a famous Taoist, for whom Ni Zan had elaborately drawn the painting of Wu Zhu Xiu Shi. Huang Gongwang, another famous painter he admired, was also a famous figure in the Quanzhen sect of Neo Taoism at that time. He had profound Taoism and was 32 years older than him. Huang Gongwang spent ten years to draw the volume of "the river and the mountain win" for Ni Zan, which is more than twenty-five feet long. It is one of Huang's masterpieces in the shallow river landscape. The title of the volume is Zhizheng Wuzi (1348). At that time, Ni Zan was 48 years old. At this time, he began to believe in Quanzhen religion, developed a character of isolation and rashness, and the thought of escaping from the world. This kind of thought is also reflected in his paintings, and his works show a desolate and simple, quiet and desolate intention. In the 20 years from 1353 to his death, Ni Zan roamed around Taihu Lake. He traveled all over Jiangyin, Yixing, Changzhou, Wujiang, Huzhou, Jiaxing and Songjiang, entertaining himself with poems and paintings. This period was also the heyday of Ni Zan's painting. He observed the beautiful scenery of Taihu Lake carefully, understood its characteristics, concentrated, refined and summarized, created new composition forms and new ink techniques, and gradually formed a new artistic style. The work has a distinctive personality. The brushwork is sharp and simple. In the close-up view, there are three or five trees, one or two thatched cottage pavilions, with a blank space above the middle to show the Miaomiao Lake wave, the bright sky, and the faint mountains in the distance. The picture is quiet and distant. This style is unprecedented. At this stage, Ni Zan created many works, such as the painting of Songlin Pavilion (1354), the painting of Yuzhuang Qiuji (1355), the painting of strange rocks Conghuang (1360), the painting of Tingshu yaocen (1363), the painting of autumn on the river (1368), and the painting of Yushan forest gully (1371), which had a great influence on the later paintings of Ming and Qing Dynasties and became one of the four painters of Yuan Dynasty. On September 18 (October 25) in 1363, his wife Jiang died, and Ni Zan was hit hard. The first son died early and the second son was unfilial. The more lonely and helpless he felt in his life, the more depressed he was. In the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang called Ni Zan to serve in Beijing, but he refused. On May 27th (June 28th), 1372, the fifth year of Hongwu in Ming Dynasty, he wrote the poem "tiyanzhenwu", which said: "only by clean water, not by dust", indicating that he was unwilling to be an official. He inscribed poems and books on the paintings, only to record the year of Jiazi, not Hongwu. In the seventh year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1374), Ni Zan lived in the family of Qi Zou in Changjing, Jiangyin. On the night of the Mid Autumn Festival, he was infected with spleen disease, so he went to the family of Xia Zuo, a well-known doctor of Qiyou. Xia Zhu stopped in Yunxuan to live there. Ni Zan died of illness on November 11 (December 14) at the age of 74. His body was buried in Xili, Jiangyin, and later in the ancestral tomb at the foot of Furong mountain in Wuxi. Zhou Nan wrote an epitaph.

Personal achievement

painting

Ni Zan is good at landscape, bamboo, dead wood and so on, among which landscape painting adopts a typical technique - folding band Cun. He is the representative painter of Nanzong landscape painting in Yuan Dynasty, and his works are mainly paper-based ink painting. His landscape was developed by imitating Dong Yuan, Jing Hao, Guan Tong and Li Cheng. His painting method was simple and his style was simple. Most of the paintings are about Taihu Lake, with plain composition and simple scenery. Most of them are about sparse forest, sloping bank and shallow water. With the pen, we can change the center to the side, fold the belt, paint the rocks, dry the ink, elegant and loose, the mood is desolate and empty, the style is simple and free, simple and complex, small and big, lonely and passionate. He is also good at painting ink and bamboo. His style is "elegant" and thin. There are many themes in the painting. Because of his simplicity, his paintings have been faked for many years, but it is not easy to imitate his depressed and indifferent temperament. In Ni Zan's painting theory, he advocates expressing his subjective feelings, and holds that painting should show the author's "free spirit in the chest" instead of seeking resemblance in shape ("the so-called painter of servant is just a careless brush, not seeking resemblance in shape, to amuse himself"). In the history of painting, Huang Gongwang, Wuzhen and Wang Meng were called the four schools of Yuan Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Dong Qichang was highly praised by others, and he was often placed above the other three. Ming he liangjunyun: "Yunlin Book Master order, no - point dust." According to Wang Mian's "sending Yang Yifu to visit Yunlin", Ni Zan "has toothpicks to fill the house with books and colorful brushes to fill the building with smoke". Ni Zan is the most influential painter in the Yuan Dynasty. His simple and light landscape painting style is the object pursued by masters in Ming and Qing Dynasties, such as Dong Qichang and Shi Tao. Shi Tao's calligraphy and painting are based on Ni Zan from spirit to style. Ni Zan, like Zhang Yu and Yang Weizhen, is also a calligrapher who pursues artistic individuality under the banner of retro. He belongs to this era and does not belong to this era. This is the transcendental value of art to the era. Jiangnan people in the Ming Dynasty were distinguished by whether they collected his paintings or not. His painting practice and theoretical views had a great influence on the painting circles of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and he is still rated as "one of the top ten painters in ancient China". Encyclopedia Britannica lists him as a world cultural celebrity. His paintings include: the painting of looking at the mountains along the river bank, the painting of bamboo trees and wild stones, the painting of streams and mountains, the painting of Six Gentlemen, the painting of water bamboo dwelling, the painting of pine forest Pavilion, the painting of lion forest, the painting of Xilin temple, the painting of cold pines in deep streams, the painting of autumn forest, the painting of spring rain and new bamboos, the painting of bamboo trees in small mountains, the painting of rongxizhai, the painting of bamboo cultivation, the painting of purple orchid mountain house, the painting of bamboo trees in Wu mountain and the painting of poems written by new geese 》And so on. There are Shuizhu Ju Tu, rongxizhai Tu, Yuzhuang Qiuji Tu, Yushan Linhe Tu, Youjian Hansong Tu, qiuting Jiashu Tu, guaishiconghuang Tu, Zhuzhi Tu, Xishan xianguan, Shuanglin turbulent stone and so on.

Calligraphy

Ni zangong is good at calligraphy and regular script. As an expert in calligraphy, he studied Buddhism and Taoism, and wandered all over the world. With a note of ice and snow, he wrote his unique style of simple, distant, desolate and elegant. Xu Weiyun said: "Zan Shu came from Li, and often gave up reincarnation in Zhong You's Jianji Zhibiao. It is ancient and charming, dense and sparse." Ni zanzhen

Chinese PinYin : Ni Zan