An Exploration Of Wu Changshuo’s Chinese Landscape Paintings

Wu Changshuo(1844-1927) is the last master of art of the feudal time as well as the first of modern society. With his profound Chinese calligraphy capability, excellent poetry accomplishment and changing sealing script styles integrating into his Chinese painting creation, he formed his unique style with the combination of poetry, calligraphy, painting and sealing script, and promoted“Jin shi hua” school to the utmost, thus having great influence on the development of modern Chinese painting and calligraphy and seal cutting, and enjoying a high reputation in the world. He was the master of the “Shanghai painting School”, a style of Chinese art present in the late 19 th century and centered in Shanghai, and the first head of “Xiling Seal Engravers’ Society”, a well-known association devoted to seal arts, the study of inscriptions on bronze and stones. Chinese Landscape Painting features a long history. With the evolution of history and the changing of the dynasties, landscape painting style and spirit also experienced changes. During the Period of the Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, the "epigraphy", like a cardiotonic, was injected into Chinese painting, and thus the painting style changed, and the pursuit of the new style became kind of fashion at the time. Therefore, as the leading figure of the“Jinshi Painting School”, Wu Changshuo is very important to both Chinese flower-and-bird painting and landscape painting at the time of the Republic of China.This paper, through an exploration of Wu Changshuo’s Chinese landscape paintings, analyzes the development of his painting style, the influence of his paintings, styles of Chinese landscape paintings during the Republic of China,the special meaning on the art history, the spirit of modern Chinese painting, and meanwhile establishes the standard for Chinese landscape painting.