Researches On The Lifestory And His Art Of Zhao Zhi Qian

It is no doubt that Zhao Zhiqian (1829-1884) was one of the most important artists in the art history during the late period of Qing Dynasty. He was the pioneer of the "Shanghai Painting School" in the painting history, and initiated the "Epigraphy Painting School" with the techniques of the handwriting and seal blended into the paintings, which exerted a tremendous influence on the development of freehand brushworks of flower-and-plant paintings in modern times; with regard to calligraphy, he was the active practitioner of the tablet theory of Qing Dynasty , whose handwriting style of Wei tablet made the technique systems of tablet groups more perfect, and so he became the paragon of the calligraphers to learn the tablets fully beyond the handwriting types of regular script, smooth script, seal character and official script etc.; he also achieved mastery through a comprehensive study of the subject based on the previous techniques in the seal cutting, carried forward creatively the creating model of "the seals imitating the handwriting" by means of "studying the seals beyond themselves" and therefore opened an unprecedentedly new field. In addition, he was well versed in poetry and had many works to his credit , he also made great contribitions in the academic researches. Anyway, Zhao Zhiqian was a figur of utmost importance in the development of the painting, calligraph and seal cutting history. With his outstanding artistic gifts, he opened up a new route for the creation of Chinese modern art.The thesis divides into such five chapters as the life story, his handwritings, the seal cuttings, the paintings and his poetry, expounds particularly the evolvement of his artistic styles by way of combining with his particular works. The author picks out some significent issues and gives emphasis to them in order to penetrate into the essence of Zhao Zhiqian's artistic creation and to find out the development of art history in the late Qing, and expetcs to produce some practical instructive effects on the current artistic creation.