The Study Of Shen Zhou’s Landscapes In The Style Of Ni Zan

Shen Zhou is the literati painter in Ming Dynasty. Among the paintings, he inherited the most quintessence part from other great artists, especially Ni Zan in Yuan Dynasty,which is worth to do some research. I first collected dozens of extant Paintings in Ni’s style, explored the reason and way why he facsimiled. Later I summarized the characteristics in the stroke and color among the authentic paintings in Ni’s style. At last I used the examination and comparison way to analyze and authenticate the individual cases among all these Ni’ Style paintings.In my suppose, facsimileing is not an occasional behavior, so I firstly did the literature consulting and learned that Shen Zhou’s tutor suggested him to learn from the famous ancients at his young age. Shen facsimiled Dong Yuan, Ju Ran in the Five Dynasty, Li Tang, Liu Song Nian, Ma Yuan, Xia Gui in Song Dynasty, painting masters in Yuan Dynasty, Dai Jin’s Genre in Ming Dynasty. With the idea from the four painting masters in the Yuan Dynasty, he created lots of fanscinating landscape paintings. Among them, without any doubt, are Ni’s. On the other side, Shen influenced by the family tradition that choosed not to be a officer but to be a hermit. This recreate-by-oneself through paintings and poems lifestyle lead to his concise and simple landscape in the paintings. And because of the fame, he earned a lot of elegant debts. The family’s rich collection supplied Shen’s painting career, Ni Zan’s Shui Zhu Ju is the one.Besides, the family friends, relatives and teachers can also give him the chance to review Ni’s painting. With the addition of his firm strokes, which made Shen Zhou a excellent imitator and even surpass Ni.In this article, I collected 33 paintings in which related to the words of Ni.Besides the Fang Ni Shan Shui in Sichuan University, all of them are badginged by Shen. So I analyzed Shen’s calligraphy style in his young age, middle age and old age, reviewed the literature,referenced others authoritative accepted and authticated 8 of them in my article. I analyzed the spot-ink and iterative-wrinkle skills, some details like stones, trees, people, house, bridge and water gap and concluded that Xi Shan Qiu Se is the most typical one In Ni’s style. In the end, I add the seal, preface and postscript analysis on the six paintings and drew a conclusion that one is real, one is still impeach, and four are fakes.Most of the former research are mainly focus on Shen Zhou’s life, apprentice and painting style, barely refer to his Ni Imitation paintings precisely, which may create a confusion in those Ni Imitation paintings. So I summarized the domestic and overseas paintings of Ni Imitation with a form and authenticated the fake one for a better research in Shen’s paintings.