Themes Of The Ming Dynasty Painter Bird Of Ladies

Flower-bird works, as one of the three branches of traditional Chinese paintings, could date back to Tang Dynasty as an independent branch. Flower-bird works, along with figure drawings and landscape,constitutes the main subject matters of traditional Chinese paintings, characterized by various animals and plants. Compared with other branches, flower-bird works possesses distinctive features, and especially its implied meaning is irreplaceable by others. However, due to political, economical, cultural and personal difference, different painters in different dynasties showed their own preference to the selection of subject matter in flower-bird works.Since Ming Dynasty, talented women, as a representative female painting group, gradually manifested their unique artistic features in the history of traditional Chinese painting. According to the statistics of the number of talented women painters and their works, paintings by women became unprecedentedly prosperous and developed and influenced the women painters in Qing and later in terms of artistic style. Seeing through the literature reviews, we may find the studies of talented women’s painting mainly concentrate on the styles of group or individual while the studies of subject matter are always seldom. As we know, subject matter is the fundamental of the painting and the key to the formation of appreciation of beauty. Among talented women, what are the characteristics of subject matter of bird-flower works popular with female painters? It is undoubtedly a important issue.Therefore, this thesis, selecting flower-bird works by talented women in Ming Dynasty as objective, conducts an analysis and has discussion from three perspectives:To begin with, the thesis, by employing iconology and aesthetics, discusses the preference of talented women in selecting the subject matters of flower-bird works.Then, the thesis adopts comprehensive and comparative analysis to explore the difference between the paintings by talented women and by other women so as to prove the specialty of the selection of talented women.Last, combining with flower-bird works by talented women, the thesis further discusses the their influences on the selection of subject matters from technique of expression and characteristics of painting and its reasons and significance.To sum up, the thesis, selecting talented women painters as objective, studies the characteristics manifested on the preference to the selection of flower-bird paintings in hopes of improve the studies on talented women painters in Ming Dynasty in terms of subject matters of paintings, forming a comprehensive knowledge and view.