The Origins And Inheritance Of Mao Sheng’s Landscape Painting Style

Sheng Mao, the painter who operated outside of the mainstream of literary painting style in the painting history of Yuan dynasty. His landscape painting had adequate traditional painting skills which had the combination of the painting features from the court painting in Song dynasty, turquois landscape paintings in Tan dynasty and Dong-Ju painting genre.Based on the research, The Painting of Four Scholarly Figures in An Autumn Forest, The Painting of Flute Player on the Cangjiang River, The Painting of Living and Enjoy the Cool in the Mountain during the Summer etc. represents very typical painting Characteristics of Mao Sheng. Under the national and cultural politics in Yuan regime, the influences of Jiangnan literati painting and his educational background, Sheng Mao did distinguish works on his vocational painting style and painting schema. Throughout the Chinese painting history, his sub-genre did not cover up by the mainstream. Moreover, his painting is valuable for the inheritance of later generations.Due to the influence of the ideologies of traditional literati painting, the research of paintings in Yuan dynasty mostly focuses on Zhao Mengfu and the Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty. As a professional folk painter, Cheng Mao did not get the recognition properly. In this article, I will demonstrate the historical literatures, the evaluations from the painting theory, and the comparison between the style of Mao Sheng and mainstream style in Yuan dynasty, in order to form the completely analysis of Mao Sheng’s landscape painting in the special historical and cultural context.