Wang Wei’s landscape painting is honored as the ancestor of Nanzong landscape painting.
Wang Wei studied Zen and understood philosophy, studied Zhuang Daoism, and was proficient in poetry, calligraphy, painting, music, etc. He was famous among Kaiyuan and Tianbao for his poems, especially five-character poems, which often sang about mountains, rivers and pastoral areas, and collaborated with Meng Haoran. He is called "Wang Meng" and is also known as the "Poetry Buddha". His calligraphy and painting were so exquisite that later generations regarded him as the ancestor of Nanzong landscape painting. Su Shi commented on him: "When you taste Mojie's poems, there are paintings in the poems; when you look at Mojie's paintings, there are poems in the paintings." There are more than 400 poems in existence, and representative poems include "Acacia", "Mountain Dwelling in the Autumn Twilight" and so on. His works include "The Collection of Wang Youcheng" and "Secrets of Painting".
The expressive technique of Wang Wei's landscape painting is characterized by the use of dark and light ink for rendering, which is different from Li Sixun's painting method of coloring landscapes, thus forming a simple, distant, and high-definition style, which injects new ideas into the painting. Vitality has had a huge impact on later generations of literati paintings. After Wang Wei, ink landscape painting gradually flourished and became a school of its own, and his contribution to the art of painting and calligraphy was indispensable. It is not unreasonable for later generations to praise him as the founder of the Southern Sect.
Introduction to Wang Wei
Wang Wei (701-761, some say 699-761) was a native of Puzhou, Hedong (now Yuncheng, Shanxi), and his ancestral home was Qi County, Shanxi. A famous poet and painter in the Tang Dynasty, his courtesy name was Mojie and his nickname was Mojie Jushi.
Wang Wei was born in the Wang family in Hedong, and passed the first prize in the 19th year of Kaiyuan (731). Li Guanyou collected relics, censored the censor, and made the judge during the Hexi Festival. During the Tianbao period of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei paid homage to the official doctor and gave him a job. When An Lushan captured Chang'an, Wang Wei was forced to take a pseudo-post. After Chang'an was recovered, he was awarded the crown prince Zhongyun. During the Qianyuan period of Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty, he served as Shangshu Youcheng, and was known as "Wang Youcheng" in his later life.