Painting Appreciation | Zhang Daqian's Painting of the Yanjiang River

Zhang Daqian's pseudo ancient green landscape has always been popular, and the market performance is excellent. As long as there are thousands of green mountains and waters exposed in the city, it is bound to lead to fierce competition among Tibetans. In the 2024 spring auction of "Grand View", China Guardian brought a large piece of ancient green landscape "Yanjiang Overlapping Mountains" in 1948, which was sold at a price of 34.5 million yuan, exceeding the highest valuation.

Zhang Daqian's "The Painting of Yanjiang River's Overlapping Mountains"

Size: 129.5 × 67 cm

Title: Plum Blossom Taoist, Yanjiang River, overlapping peaks. Gai Quanshi Beiyuan did not attack Wang Jinqing. In April, a thousand people lived together.
The river is full of worries, and the sky is as green as clouds. The mountains are too far away to know, and the clouds are still scattered in the sky. But there are hundreds of springs flying from the dark valley on the two cliffs. The lingering woods and rocks are hidden, and we go down to the valley for Benchuan. Chuanping Mountain is broken at the foot of Kailin Mountain, and Xiaoqiao Yedian is in front of the mountain. Pedestrians walk slightly beyond the trees, and the fishing boat swallows the sky with a leaf. Over the days, the poems of the festival were repeated.
Seal Zhang Yuan, Daqian Jushi, Zhang Yuan's private seal, Xiaoxiang Painting House
Collection seal: Liangxi Rong Zihao treasured, loved Daqian paintings as rare as rare, and treasured them. Liangxi Rong's Zihao once collected twenty-seven prints of Daqian boutiques
Publishing 1. Collection of Landscape Paintings in the 20th Century, page 134, Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House, 2006 edition.
2. A Comprehensive Guide to Chinese Landscape Painting, Shaoxing Going Forward, cover, page 106, Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House, 2006 edition.
3. Wang Shen's Research on Yanjiang Overlapping Mountains, page 248, Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2016 edition. (The size in this publication is incorrect)
4. The Garden of True Appreciation of Clouds, Famous Paintings, Zhang Daqian's Landscape, pp. 40-43, Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House, 2018.
5. Oriental Collection, page 94, Oriental Collection Magazine, Issue 5, 2020.
6. Collection in Prosperity, page 54, Shanghai Jiaotong University Press, 2020 edition.
7. Oriental Collection, page 12, Oriental Collection Magazine, 2021, Issue 15.

This piece of green giant "Yanjiang Overlapping Mountains" takes the lead. Thousands of mountains are piled up on the river, and the accumulation of green jade is like floating clouds, which is where the charm of the millennium lies. What is rare is that it is painted on the silk, which is verdant, moist and cool. The seal of "Xiaoxiang Painting Building" is stamped to show the thousand years' understanding of Dong Beiyuan's plain and innocent life. This painting is a treasure of Rong's family in Wuxi, a big family in the Republic of China, and the seal has the seal of "love for a thousand paintings is like a rare treasure", which shows the importance of love for this painting!

Although this picture is called "The Painting of Plum Blossom Taoist Man on the Yanjiang River", the image is actually taken from "Dong Qichang's Landscape Collection in Song and Yuan Dynasties". This album has 22 pages in total. It is also called "Small, Medium and Large" because of Dong Qichang's inscription "Small, Medium and Large". It is now in the Palace Museum in Taipei. In October of the fourth year of the Republic of China (1915), the Palace Museum Antiquities Exhibition Hall was open to the public, and at the same time, the old collections of calligraphy and painting, ceramics, bronzes, etc. in the Qing Palace were photocopied and published. In December of the ninth year of the Republic of China (1920), the Antiquities Exhibition House photocopied and published Dong Qichang's Landscape Album in Song and Yuan Dynasties for sale to the public. The exhibition and publication of the old collections of the Qing Palace has expanded people's vision of traditional art, provided people with the opportunity to directly watch and copy ancient art masterpieces, and played a huge role in promoting the development of Chinese painting in the 20th century. Zhang Daqian was also one of the many beneficiaries. He began to realize the importance of Dong Qichang, Dong Yuan and Juran, and moved from copying Shi Tao and the Eight Great Masters to painting in Tang and Song Dynasties, tracing back to the origin. Fu Shen, a famous art history expert, believes that "since the mid-1920s, Mr. Daqian has imitated Yuan people, such as Wu Zhen, Tang Di, Gao Kegong, etc. Since the establishment of the Palace Museum on October 10, the 14th year of the Republic of China (1925), some paintings in the Palace Museum have been published, including Dong Qichang's" See the Big Book in Small " This book is Daqian's entry way into the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and has always played an important leading role in tracing his origin in the future. In fact, as early as Zhang Daqian, famous artists of all dynasties copied Dong Qichang's "See the Big Book in the Small". This book copied by Wang Hui and Wang Jiansuo is now in the Shanghai Museum. Among them, one page of "Yanjiang Overlapping Mountains" is completely preserved, but limited to the size of the album, the size is small, and the color is thin. Compared with Zhang Daqian's picture, the weather is very different and inferior. Compared with Dong's "Small, Medium and Modern", we can see that Zhang Daqian is not rigidly attached to Dong Qichang's original works. His layout, brushwork and color all reflect his new understanding of ancient classics and his determination to transcend them, and he can be called one of the best works of imitating ancient landscapes in history. It is also one of the most classic cases of his "bloody battle with the ancients" artistic achievements.

In terms of picture layout, Mr. Daqian intentionally opened the space distance between the mountains and rivers in his paintings, changed the relationship between light and dark colors, and also made partial adjustments to the bamboo forests and wooden bridges between the slopes, which successfully demonstrated the artistic conception of "worrying about the river and piling up the mountains, floating in the sky and accumulating green like clouds and smoke".
In terms of brushwork, Dong Yuan's and Juran's brushwork are combined, which are characterized by rich layers, flexibility, and verdant moss, making them more lush and dense. The white clouds and waterfalls in the mountains are all in the form of blank space. There are several ancient trees at the foot of the slope. Except for one lying ancient tree, which is outlined by the Song Yuan Crab Claw Method, the other trees are left blank, slightly ochre, leaf hook and leaf spot methods, which are consistent with Daqian's own statement.
In terms of color design, the Painting of Imitating Wang Ximeng's Thousands of Miles of Rivers and Mountains inherits the painting technique from the Sui and Tang Dynasties. It is green and green in the main color, and uses clay gold to outline the horizon, mountain outline, slope bottom, and water lines. Under the sunlight, it is resplendent and dazzling. In the Painting of Taoist Plum Blossom Facing the Yanjiang River, the mountains are covered with green, and some slope stones and distant mountains are slightly covered with blue. The color is elegant, warm as jade, and the mist is floating like a fairyland, creating a new style of green landscape.

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Editor: Chen Liling

Editor in Chief | Liao Weifu