Portrait of Wang Hui
Wang Hui took the ancient road at first, absorbed the painting techniques of predecessors, and then created a unique style through his own transformation. Wang Hui was born in a literati family. From the beginning, he traced back to his ancestors. He has been good at painting for five generations. Influenced by his family, Wang Hui liked painting very much since he was a child. When Wang Hui was young, he studied with his fellow countryman Zhang Ke and often copied ancient paintings and sold them to unscrupulous businessmen.
Wang Hui had a high ability to paint antiques when he was 20 years old. Soon, Henry Hui Wang's talent for painting was discovered by Wang Jian, who was already famous at that time. Wang Jian immediately accepted Henry Hui Wang as an apprentice and introduced him to Wang Shimin. Wang Shimin and Wang Jian like Henry Hui Wang very much, so apart from promoting him from time to time, they also took out their own representative works and copied them to Henry Hui Wang. Therefore, Wang Hui's paintings have developed rapidly. When Wang Hui was about 40 years old, he was already a great painter. In the early Qing Dynasty, he was even called a painting saint, and was also called "the first man on the sea".
At the age of 60, Wang recommended him, and Kangxi instructed him to draw a southern tour map. This trip to the South is almost the best of all Wang Hui's works. Wang Hui's paintings are also very famous and popular. However, after becoming famous, the quality of Wang Hui's paintings gradually declined, and most of them were casual.
Wang Hui's works
Wang Hui received family education in his early years and studied under Zhang Ke. He showed extraordinary painting ability in his early years. Most of Wang Hui's works are landscape paintings, but even if they are all landscape paintings, they are created by one person. Wang Hui's landscape paintings have different styles due to different creation time.
Characters in Henry Hui Wang's Works
Wang Hui's landscape paintings are mainly divided into early, middle and late periods. Before the age of 25, Wang mainly copied historical sites. At that time, Wang's paintings were still immature, and his works looked naive. By the middle age after the age of 35, Wang Hui had copied too many excellent works of his predecessors and learned a lot of excellent skills from them. Combine the strengths of various painters in Wang Hui and apply them to their own paintings.
When people reach middle age, Wang Hui's paintings are so delicate that he refuses any dissatisfied parts. He is very strict. Therefore, this period is also a period when Henry Hui Wang's excellent works frequently appear. It is one of the works of this period. In his later years after the age of 60, Henry Hui Wang's works lagged far behind his predecessors. In her later years, Wang Hui was always busy with social activities. When the world asked him for paintings, he inadvertently handled some paintings, and some even asked people to help him do them. Nevertheless, Henry Hui Wang created some excellent works in his later years.
In Wang Hui's works, the early painting style is mainly beautiful and elegant, while the later one is boundless and vigorous. His works were very famous in Qing Dynasty, and stood out among the "Four Heavenly Kings". The market price of Wang Hui's works has been relatively high for many years, so it is warmly welcomed by collectors. 1986, one of his landscape books was auctioned for $396,000. Since then, although the price is not as high as it is now, Wang Hui is still the highest among painters in the Qing Dynasty.