Selections from the works of Ming Dynasty master Qiu Ying

Author: Tianjin Fine Arts Publishing House
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Qiu Ying (c. 1498—c. 1552), a native of Taicang, Jiangsu Province. One of the "Four Masters of the Ming Dynasty." The other three masters were all literati, while Qiu Ying, a craftsman by birth, dedicated his life to painting and became renowned in the art world. He deeply understood folk tastes and excelled in copying ancient paintings. Historians praised him as "capable of capturing the essence of Tang and Song Dynasty paintings," earning him a distinguished reputation in the industry. His paintings in various subjects bore the refined and delicate "elegance, delicacy, and grace" of the court style, much admired by literati painters, making him an art representative appreciated by both the refined and the popular. Among the "Four Masters of the Ming Dynasty," Qiu Ying's painting style was both distinctive and diverse, partly due to his winding life experiences and extensive social interactions. As the saying goes, "If one paints like Qiu, one cannot but surpass Qiu's family. Thus, it is not about increasing value through praise." This shows that Qiu Ying's imitation of the art of his predecessors was not only meticulous in spirit but also broad in learning, unbound by a single teacher or school. In his painting career, he drew heavily from the traditional art of the court painters of the Southern Song Dynasty, such as Li Tang, Xiao Zhao, Liu Songnian, and Ma Yuan. Building upon the legacy of these masters, Qiu Ying developed multiple painting styles, including meticulous brushwork, blue-and-green landscapes, combined brushwork with freehand, and freehand brushwork. He excelled in various subjects, such as landscapes, folk scenes, figures, horse-and-mule paintings, beauties, and flowers. His themes included historical stories, mythological legends, portraits, and landscapes of Wu region, among others. Among his various painting subjects and themes, figure painting stood out the most. As Jiang Shoushu's Silent Poem History of the Ming Dynasty remarked: "Qiu Ying's paintings are elegant, delicate, and graceful, with brushwork rivaling Ye Yu. His figure paintings 'emit green and gold, with silk red and white threads, exquisite and brilliant, without falling short of the ancients,' and his beauty paintings 'possess a lively spirit, even if they were resurrected, they could not surpass them.'" Xie Zhao's Five Miscellaneous Notes of the Ming Dynasty aptly described the taste of Qiu Ying's figure paintings: "Although Qiu Shifu gained fame for his figure paintings, his artistic interest was refined and light, not solely focused on and craftsmanship. For example, the Spring in the Han Palace he is said to have painted does not reflect his true style." In other words, Qiu Ying's figure paintings, though lifelike and exquisite, retained an elegant charm, appealing to both the refined and the popular. He was skilled at observing and experiencing life, accurately capturing the vivid and expressive details that reflected the essence of human nature, such as in his Viewing the, which vividly depicted the urgent desire of feudal literati to pass the imperial examinations. The lines in his paintings were "every stroke like iron wires, with clear starts and ends, full of rhythm and emotion, yet often exuding a sense of dispersal, like the small regular script of the Tang Dynasty, inviting endless exploration." His lines, while elegant and delicate, revealed a sense of joy and lightness, reflecting the author's longing for the optimistic and leisurely hermit life of literati.
Secondly, Qiu Ying also demonstrated great skill in landscape painting. Most of his landscapes combined with figure activities, with the sentiments of the figures primarily drawn from the hermit life of literati. His landscape paintings had two styles: The first was the small blue-and-green landscapes, inspired by the Southern Song Dynasty masters Zhao Bochu and Zhao Bohu, abandoning the gold powder of earlier blue-and-green landscapes and incorporating a touch of literati elegance. The style was clear, delicate, and graceful, with meticulous and realistic techniques that retained a lively and dynamic spirit. The second was colored landscape painting, deeply influenced by the meticulous style of Li Tang of the Southern Song Dynasty, while also incorporating the exquisite and bright brushwork and color use of Liu Songnian. Qiu Ying's landscape compositions broke free from the conventions of Ma Yuan's "corner" and Xia's "half-side" of the Southern Song Dynasty, increasing the depth of field in his paintings and featuring the panoramic, grand landscapes of the Northern Song Dynasty masters Li Cheng and Guo Xi. His landscapes were expansive and serene. Throughout his life, Qiu Ying continuously absorbed the aesthetic tastes of literati painters but maintained his personal style. Due to his innate influence as a lacquer worker and the significant impact of Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, and Tang Yin in the late Ming Dynasty, literati painters in the Wu region were more inclined to express the spirit of brushwork than to engage with Qiu Ying's meticulous brushwork. His daughter, Qiu Zhu, known as Duling Neishi, inherited her father's art but was limited by her own cultural background. She never inscribed poems or texts in her paintings, mostly signing her name and rarely dating them, which has made it somewhat difficult for modern scholars to study the formation and development of Qiu Ying's style.