On The Inherited Painting Style Of Shen Zhou And Wen Zhengming

The four Ming masters,who are also known as the Four Wu families,respectively are Shen Zhou,Wen Zhengming,Tang Yin and Qiu Ying.They lived in Jiangsu area and mainly depicted the natural scenery of Jiangnan region.Shen Zhou is the founder of Wumen Painting School.And Wen Zhengming is undoubtedly the promoter of it.Shen Zhou established and laid the foundation for the most typical painting mode of Wumen Painting School.At the same time,he opened a new prospect for the depiction of Jiangnan scenery.So,he is definitely the founder of Wumen Painting School.Wen Zhengming succeeded Shen Zhou's painting style and popularized it to the whole country,which established the position and influence of Wumen Painting School.At that time,many literati painters didn't focused on following the nature and observing the physical images.However,these kind of superficiality and ignorance was totally changed by Wumen Painting School.They combined the characteristics of the sophisticated paintings in Song Dynasty and the ethereal paintings in Yuan Dynasty.Thus,the paintings could be finally presented to the eyes of the world in its unique way.Wen Zhengming was a disciple of Shen Zhou.And in succession,the painting style was developed and innovated greatly by him.Both of them were good at the painting styles of rough strokes and delicate strokes,which could meet the social demands of the different classes at that time.The painting style of Shen Zhou is very rich in its form.He learned from Du Qiong and Chen Kuan in his early years.In the meanwhile,he also devoted himself to copying the paintings in Yuan Dynasty.In this period,Shen Zhou was mainly influenced by the painting styles of Wang Meng and Southern Song Dynasty academy,which contributed to precise composition and neat and orderly strokes.In the middle age,his painting style changed from an exquisite one to a bold one,which was vigorous,vibrant and sophisticated.The works in this period were totally different from the rigorous and meticulous style in his early years but presented to be vast and unconstrained.Wen Zhenming was accustomed to using heavy colors,like dark green,in landscape paintings.His paintings were of well-knit structure and layout with the pursuit of antique style,which had an artistic conception of classic elegance and simplicity.The essay focuses on the inheritance of the painting styles of Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming,using the entry point of the change from Shen Zhou's painting style from meticulousness to unconstraint to Wen Zhenming's painting style of both rough-wen and delicate-wen through his whole life.From here,it can be seen that both of them are capable of rough style and delicate style in the painting forms.The essay aims to analyze the influence to Wen Zhengming's paintings by Shen Zhou through the paintings of them,and experience their inherited painting style characteristics.