Rongbaozhai Huashe.160. Flowers Part

Author: Ma Wanli
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Mr. Ma Wanli is renowned for his artistic career, primarily in painting. His works excel in depicting flowers, birds, grasshoppers, vegetables, fruits, and chicks, all rendered with exquisite detail. He also excels in landscape painting, characterized by bold and vigorous strokes with a touch of Ming Dynasty artistic influence. Occasionally, he paints in the green-and-blue style, which is equally impressive. His floral paintings feature brilliant red blossoms and fragrant white petals, exuding a vibrant springtime aura amidst their intricate arrangements. His wisteria paintings are particularly outstanding, while his black bamboo works are equally refined and ethereal.
Mr. Ma excels in calligraphy and inscription, paying meticulous attention to the placement, size, and ink tones of his inscriptions, as well as the size, red-and-white balance, and color depth of his seals. He even prepares five-color ink pads, a special creation by Xie Hanhua in Nanjing before the War of Resistance, using century-old oil. The pigments were gifted by Tian Xie'an, a Mongolian painter specializing in horse portraits during the Qing Dynasty. Tian, a descendant of Qing Dynasty Beizi (prince’s son), possessed imperial ink sticks in red, white, blue, black, and yellow. The vermilion was a gift from a French artist to Mei Lanfang, who later passed it on to Mr. Ma.
Mr. Ma once used dark ink to paint bamboo, light ink for inscriptions, and a bright orange-yellow ink pad to stamp a small white seal, creating a fresh and unique style. He also experimented with deep-colored imitation ancient paper to paint white flowers, using white ink pads for the seals, resulting in a fragrant, elegant, and antique charm.