A Study On YUN Shouping's Painting Art

Yun Shouping was a famous artist in the early Qing Dynasty, who was good at painting both landscape and flowers, and was one among"Six Great Masters"in the contemporary painting world. Not only was he a prolific painter, but his commentary on painting was profound as well. As to tradition and innovation, he proposed following not only the ancient painters but also the nature, and further having soul as the destination. He himself learned from the ancient painters, but was not trapped; he advocated a painting style of"not ancient nor contemporary, not traversing the established path"and put it into practice. Being directed to the contemporary paintings of lettermen purely pursuing the alikeness in spirit and taking realistic painting lightly, he held that realistic painting should be weighed heavily,"pursuing unlikeness by way of extreme alikeness"; with respect to painting skills, he emphasized the training of pen and ink, thinking that the extent of"pen beyond pen and ink beyond ink"in Chinese paintings could be reached only through the skillful use of pen and ink, arguing against the painting style of ignoring artistic skills but exaggerating the import beyond paintings.With regard to how to inherit painting traditions and how to innovate, YUN Shouping's painting commentary was novel considerably and its influence on the later painters was far-reaching. His landscape and flower paintings established themselves as a distinctive style with high artistic achievements. As a valuable attempt, he invented flower-painting approach following the convention of XU Chongci's boneless painting method in North Song Dynasty and incorporating the advantages of imperial-court decorative paintings in Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty painters'freehand brushwork paintings. His"boneless flower"paintings opened a new way for the composition of contemporary and later flower paintings, and thereby he became the founder of"Changzhou Painting School".