Hongren (painter)

Arrival of Fall, about 1660, Honolulu Museum of Art

Sound of Spring in a Deserted Valley, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hongren ( Chinese  弘仁 , Pinyin Hóngrén , W.-G. Hung-jen ; personal name Jiang Tao Chinese  江 韬 , Pinyin Jiāng Tāo , stage name Jianjiang Chinese  漸 江 , Pinyin Jiàn Jiāng ; born around 1610 ; died 1664 in She Xian ) a Chinese painter of the late Ming and Qing dynasties and BuddhistMonk. He is known as one of the most important masters of the Anhui school and at the height of his work he created landscape paintings in a distinctive style.

Life

There are various details about the birthplace of Hongren, he could have been born in Xiuning or She Xian. He probably grew up in She Xian. His family had some influence in the southern Anhui region . Hongren's father died prematurely, so Hongren had to earn additional income for his mother by collecting firewood or carrying water. Later he copied old texts and hired himself as a scribe. When his mother died too, he fell into a crisis and gave up all plans to start a family.

As a teenager, Hongren received a classical Confucian education and passed the official examination at the level of Shengyuan . After that he did not study any further, but neither did he begin a civil service career. When the Ming dynasty collapsed and Jiangnan was conquered by the troops of the future Qing dynasty in 1645, Hongren fled to Fujian with Wang Muli - probably his teacher Wang Wuyai . Both men became Zen Buddhist monks there; here Hongren took his monastery name Hongren and his stage name Jianjiang . Entry into monastic life was probably motivated by religious convictions, but also by the risk of political persecution. Hongren was hostile to the Manchu- dominated Qing dynasty and many of his friends had held offices during the Ming dynasty. His friends Wang Muli, Wang Taizheng, and Xu Chu even joined a society that wanted to restore the Ming Dynasty.

In 1651 or 1652 Hongren returned to his homeland, but continued to live in various monasteries in the region, including those in the area around the Huangshan Mountains . From there he made some trips: he visited the Huangshan Mountains at least three times, in 1658 he stayed in Nanjing , in 1661 he visited Yangzhou and Hangzhou , in 1663 he visited the Lu Shan . Hongren died on Mount Piyun in She Xian. Following his request, his grave was lined with plum trees, from which his posthumous name of old plum blossom monk (梅花 古 衲, Meihua Guna) is derived.

plant

The oldest surviving work by Hongren is part of a series of picture scrolls that Hongren created with other Anhui artists. It was created in 1639 and is signed Jiang Tao and is preserved in the Shanghai Museum . The depictions draw on themes from the Yuan dynasty , especially Ni Zan's depiction of a simple pavilion with a winding path. Other works that can be seen in Tokyo are also based on Ni Zan with the large empty spaces and the depictions of pavilions. The pavilions standing on high cliffs already indicate the style of later work by Hongren.

For the period between 1639 and 1651 there are hardly any works that can be safely attributed to Hongren. Between 1651 and 1663 Hongren's artistic activity reached its peak. During this time he made the painting style of Ni Zan known and popular with the economical use of landscape forms. Hongren's style is characterized by light brushstrokes, little ink flow and a few distinctive strokes. His landscapes often show steep mountains with flat peaks. The most important work is the arrival of autumn , which is dated to around 1660. It shows a river meandering through a rock formation and a towering mountain in the background. This picture also reflects the influence of Ni Zan; the arrangement of small rocks between larger objects is likely to be inspired by Huang Gongwang . Hongren, however, undoubtedly adopted the composition from pictures from the Northern Song Dynasty , which he must have seen on his visit to Nanjing.

Apart from the arrival of autumn , Hongren has received contributions to a series of scrolls dating from 1651. A collection of landscape paintings that he created in Nanjing in 1657, painted fans from 1655 and the scroll of landscapes of the Feng River from 1661 have also survived the times.

Web links

Commons : Hong Ren  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Hongren in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Vyvyan Brunst and James Cahill: Hongren . In: Jane Turner (Ed.): The dictionary of art . tape 14 . Grove, Oxford 1996, ISBN 1-884446-00-0 , pp. 722-723 .