China Popular Itineraries |
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Huang Quan (in the West Shu State in the Five Dynasties): Rare Birds |
Huang Quan(? - 965), a painter of the West Shu State in the Five Dy-nasties, excelled in drawing flowers and birds. As an imperial painter, he was obliged to draw all of the rare birds, exotic stones and flowers of the palatial garden in order to appeal to the taste of those of the court. As far as his paint-ing technique is concerned, he followed and developed his predecessors' tradi-tion of painting from life. In order to portray the vivid flowers and birds, he took great trouble to watch, think about and learn their habits and character-istics. Delicate lines with soft colors are so applied that lines are hardly seen because they are well harmonized with colors. Whatever is portrayed is true to life. Since he focused on the subject of flowers and birds, his paintings were appreciated for decoration in court. His pictures bear the features of consum-mate preciseness, bright-colored beauty and fine brush-work and they present scenes of riches and honor.
Rare Birds (picture No. 16, see p. 686) was a model that Huang Quan had painted for his son, Huang Jubao to study. The picture, 41.5cm กม 70cm, colored on silk scroll, exhibits more than 20 kinds of different birds and in-sects such as sparrow, turtle-dove, hawfinch, turtle, cicada, bee, grasshop-per, etc. They are portrayed so exactly, modeled so precisely, with texture so striking that it shows his masterly ability to draw from reality, and exempli-fies high level of expression in flower and bird painting in the Five Dynasties. This is a work of flower and bird painting in China during the medieval times. It is of great value for its preciseness in depicting nature and for its aesthetic taste as an artistic image even though it is a painting from nature. His flower and bird paintings show the level he had reached in presenting the body and the spirit, in vivid recreation of the nature. |
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