Research On Wenzhengming's Garden Landscape Painting

Wen Zhengming is a literati painter with those times' prominent characteristics.He is not only a representative of Wu School of painting but also a painting master in Suzhou Area in Mid-Ming dynasty.In his entire life,he enjoyed and created many Chinese garden landscape paintings.It was popular in Mid-Ming dynasty to build private Chinese gardens and a great number of gardens were built up,which became a theme of paintings accordingly.Wen Zhengming would like to develop his career as a civil servant but his bad luck in government system narrowed down his career as a painter.He failed ten times in the imperial competitive examination before he was offered a civil servant position in the capital but he finally withdrew from the government.During the whole period,his emotional changes affected his painting works.Some of his worksed described the Chinese gardens at that times and refined scholars' daily life in the gardens in Suzhou.This essay aims to understand Wen Zhengming's painting motivation through researching his life experience and then Chinese garden construction move.His failure in civil servant career was comforted and his dream was rebuilt by landscape painting.His landscape painting characteristics were analyzed by pictures and its accompanying words in this essay.The Chinese gardens in his paintings were quiet,subtle,peaceful and elegant,which were the dream place for refined scholars to stay.His works led the direction of landscape paintings in later Ming dynasty and also affected landscape paintings development afterwards.