A Study On Xiang Shengmo 's Landscape Paintings

Xiang Shengmo was born in a rich family in JiaXing, in the late Ming dynasty. The family’s lucrative collection makes Xiang Shengmo had unique advantage on learning Chinese traditional landscape paintings. The artistic characteristic of Xiang Shengmo’s late landscape paintings has a slightly different with the early ones, and the late ones are more sophisticated and vigorous. Overall, Shengmo’s landscape paintings include impressionistic, realistic and antique three styles. In addition to show his personal understanding and recognition of landscape, Xiang Shengmo also passed his many kinds of inner human feelings in his paintings, that is, the hermit feelings, care for the fate of his nation feelings, and the deep emotion to the former dynasty. Before the demise of Ming dynasty, Xiang Shengmo’s landscape paintings mainly reflected the praise and longing for the reclusion life and his attention to the suffering and helpless people. After the demise of Ming dynasty, his landscape paintings changed the emotional tone, mainly showed his grief to the nation’s demise and thoughts of the old country. In addition, Xiang Shengmo was a prolific painter. The numbers of his existing paintings are over one hundred.And most of them are landscape paintings. From the inscription of these works, we can know that Xiang Shengmo created the paintings primarily for friends, self-appreciation, and some for learning. After the demise of Ming dynasty, selling his painting was also one purpose of his creation. The main factors of affecting Xiang Shengmo’s landscape paintings creation include subjective factors and objective factors. Subjective factors include his interests and attitude. Objective factors include the rich collection of his family, make friends widely and many travels, as well as the time background. Although Xiang Shengmo is the mainstay of JiaXing School, his impact may not be as wide as Shenzhou,Weng Zhengming in the Wu School or Dong Qichang in the SongJiang School. Nevertheless, Xiang Shengmo cannot be neglected when we study the painting history of late Ming and early Qing dynasties.