A Study Of Figures Painting In Ming Dynasty

From the development process of China’s painting history,figure painting matures early, the flower and bird painting and landscape painting rise subsequently, figure painting declines gradually after the heyday of the Sui and Tang Dynasties.Landscape painting, flower and bird painting at that time during the Song and Yuan Dynasties were more developed relatively, the traditional painting of the Song and Yuan Dynasty was inherited by the Ming Dynasty.Schools of landscape painting, flower and bird painting were quite many, they belong to various systems,gained notable achievements, but figure painting of this period got some development.From the early Ming Dynasty,under the leadership of Dai Jun,the rise of "zhe" including the load Wu Wei and so on,they drawed the previous excellent painting tradition and then integrated their own style and elements,made outstanding contributions to the development of the Ming Dynasty’s figure painting.And then to the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the “zhe”declined gradually,the "Wu" replaced,with Shen Zhou as the leader of this school.Wen Zhengming got up, at that time also had a lot of followers, however,Tang Yin and Qiu Ying then also lived in Suzhou,they two were known for painting.Later,they two and Wen Zhengming and Shen Zhou were called "Wu door four",their paintings had distinguishing features each,in a certain sense,figure painting of the Ming Dynasty got recovery and revitalization during the period of declination and defects,but also made an important affect on the development of the China’s painting.During the end of the Ming Dynasty,a group of outstanding painters which had exaggerated painting style arised in figure painting,just like a new force suddenly rises in the Ming and Qing Dynasties of the time.Their main representatives were Wu Bin, Ding Yunpeng,Cui Zizhong, Chen Hongshou and so on. Aesthetic ideas and social psychological features generated by differences in background of times,leaded to the appearances of their unique painting style. In China’s portrait painting language field,their variational painting style made matting effect to the development of figure painting.At the same time,they impacted the art circles of the late Ming Dynasty greatly, layed important foundation for figure painting of Qing Dynasty even now.My essay tried to analyse and study the figure paintings of three periods of Ming Dynasty,early,middle,and late.Listed representative painters of each period, analyze the painting style of that time by paintings and studied the great effect of Ming Dynasty’s figure painting to our whole development of painting.