And yuanji

The main source of information about the artist is his biography in the treatise "Notes on Painting" by theorist and critic of the XI century Guo Zhuosui , who was a contemporary of Yuanji. Guo Zhuyu reports the following: “And Yuanji, the middle name of Tinzhi, is from Changsha. Inventively talented and witty. He especially succeeded in composing paintings. In paintings of flowers, birds, bees and cicadas he achieved elegance and (conveyed) the hidden. First he painted flowers and fruits. When I saw the works of Zhao Chang, I admired them and gave up. Later, he sought to glorify his name with something that the old masters did not achieve, so he began to draw saig and monkeys. Wandered between Jing and Hu, went deep more than a hundred into the Wanshaw mountains to look at the black monkeys, saigas and deer, climbed up to where the views of the forests and stones opened up - everything that was seen entered into the heart and was imprinted forever. He sought to convey unbridled-free natural properties. Often stayed for many months and lived among the highlanders. That's what his love of nature and zeal reached. Once, behind a house in Changsha, he dug a pond, randomly scattered stones, flower bushes, bamboo, broken reeds there and settled waterfowl among this. Every day, I carefully watched from the window until (the birds) moved or rested, played, or rested. Thus, he enriched the amazing skill of his brush. In the year of jiacheng [1064] of the reign of Jiping When the Xiaoyan Pavilion (景 靈宮) was built in the Jingling Palace (景 靈宮), Yuanji was invited to paint the screens for the emperor in the Inlici Pavilion (迎 釐 齊 殿). Among them was a screen with the image of stones on Taihu Lake. Below, he painted the famous quails and pigeons and the illustrious flowers of the Lo River. On the side wings he painted peacocks. In addition, in the pavilion, Shenyu painted a small screen, depicting a saiga. Everywhere until the end he carried out his plans. When Yuanji was called to court, he gladly accepted this order and told his relatives: "I have studied art all my life, now I can demonstrate it." After some time, he received an order to paint the painting “One Hundred Black Monkeys” for (decorating) the western wall of the Kaisian Hall. The courtiers were ordered to observe his work. At first they gave him two hundred thousand (coins) for paint and mascara. He drew only ten monkeys and died during an epidemic. Yuanji was constantly engaged in painting, the rules (of his art) are not the same as for everyone, ideas are free ( shu ), there are diligent ( mi ). Although not everything (in his art) corresponded to the laws of teachers, but he revered the old masters. In doing so, he surpassed the trends of the times and put into circulation his beautiful name. If Yuanji had finished One Hundred Monkeys, he would have found a host (for this picture), but he died. Such is his fate! Generations passed: “Saiga and monkey”, “Peacock”, “ Flowers and birds of four seasons”, “Sketches of fruits and vegetables”. [In the east hall of Jianlong Palace there is a superb deer, monkey, forest and stones of his brush. Once upon a screen, which is located in front of the Dujian Hall in the city of Yuhan he painted a falcon. Previously, there were nests of swallows, after which they no longer appeared there.] ” ^[2]

Dutch sinologist Robert van Gulik , an expert on the behavior of gibbons, noted how naturally their image is in canvases by Yuanji. For example, Yi Yuanji never drew a “chain of gibbons”: a chain of gibbons hanging from a tree and holding each other’s hands ^[3] - a motif popular in traditional Chinese art, but not reflecting the real behavior of these monkeys ^[1] .

And Yuanji spent most of his life in southern China, serving as a teacher-mentor in the Confucian temple of his hometown. In the era of Zhiping (1064-1067), he was twice invited to the imperial court to carry out paintings. For the first time to the court of Emperor Inzong ( 英宗 ) in Kaifeng , he was invited in 1064. The artist painted with decorative flowers, pigeons and peacocks decorative screens for imperial audiences in the Inli Post Hall in the Jingling Mausoleum ^[4] . Later, he again worked in the imperial palace. The last work begun by Yi Yuanji was the "painting of a hundred gibbons" commissioned by the emperor (猿 猿 图). However, the artist died, having drawn only a few gibbons. ^[1] Rumor had it that he was poisoned by envious court artists. ^[5]

The famous Sun writer, calligrapher and artist Mi Fu (1051-1107) in his work “Huashi” (History of Painting) dedicated Yi Yuanzi a separate chapter in which he tells about his excellent scrolls and laments the fate of this master “fluff and feather”, whom the members of the Academy of Painting envied and who were allowed to write only monkeys and roe deer; in the end, according to Mi Fu, he was poisoned.

Painting monkeys in Chinese art has its own symbolic meaning. And the monkeys and gibbons and anthropoids in the Chinese language are designated by one word "yuan." In the traditional Chinese calendar, every 12 years, the year of the monkey begins, therefore, approximately every 12th resident of China is a “monkey”. This fact alone can explain the appearance and spread of the genre of images of this animal. However, besides this, the monkey aroused romantic feelings in people due to the fact that, living in the mountains and forests, it was associated with freedom, solitude and inaccessibility of the mountains, and for Chinese Buddhists, the Monkey King was one of the popular figures in Buddhist mythology. Therefore, the created by Yuanji monkey genre was doomed to success.

The Osaka Museum of Art houses a painting by Yuanji, which depicts several dozen gibbons. This is a horizontal silk scroll with a width of 30 cm and a length of 120 cm. Since its composition does not have a clearly defined beginning, van Gulik suggests that this is the end (left) part of the scroll on which the artist originally depicted (or intended to depict) a hundred gibbons. This canvas at one time belonged to the Chinese emperors, and in 1755, Emperor Qianlong , famous for his love of painting, personally painted an eight-poem on it, praising both Yuanji and gibbons ^[1] .

The image of Yuanji, its proximity to nature, attracts the attention of modern Chinese artists ^[6] .

(by Prince James Cahill "An index of early Chinese painters and paintings: Tang, Sung, and Yüan" University of California Press. 1980, pp 104-105)

• Monkey and the spider. Fan painting. Attributed. South Sung work? Beijing, Gugong
• Three monkeys on an old bitch. Fan painting. Suna work. Gugong, Beijing
• A monkey sitting on the ground and holding a cat on its chest, the second cat is watching. Fine work in the style of gong-bi in pale colors. Scroll. Huizong inscription. Colophons Zhao Mengfu and Zhang Xi. Script? Gugong, Taipei
• Gibbons and deer. Fan painting. Attributed. Probably paired with a painting attributed to Ma Shizhong in the same collection. Both are similar to copies carefully made in the Minsk era from the Suna works. Gugong, Taipei
• Three monkeys on a juniper tree. Fan painting. Yuan or later work. Gugong, Taipei.
• Bamboo and rabbits. Album sheet. Signed. Late copy. Gugong, Taipei
• Monkey grabbing a heron chick from the nest. Fan painting. Attributed. Previously stored in the collection of the Manchurian ruling house.
• A female monkey with a cub on a tree; below a deer and a deer. Fan painting. Attributed. Collection Zhang Datsian.
• Frowning monkey on an old tree. Album sheet. Attributed. Previously stored in the collection of C. D. Chen, Hong Kong
• Three monkeys on an oak tree. Fan painting. Attributed. Collection of Zhang Beji, Taipei.
• Little birds gathered on a tree near the stone. A fragment of a scroll? There is a signature. Work period Ming or Qing. Bao Duancheng Collection.
• Monkeys playing on trees and stones. Scroll, silk, mascara. The poem of Emperor Qianlong is attributed. Colophon of the Yuan artist Qian Xuan. Copy? Osaka Municipal Museum.
• White goose on the river bank. Scroll; silk, mascara, paints. Attributed. Osaka Municipal Museum.
• Three gibbons climbing a tree. Signed by the name of the artist. Minsk work. Freer Gallery, Washington
• Several works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York that are attributed to him: Landscape with goats (scroll); Flowers and birds (scroll); An album with drawings of different fauna; Monkeys who attacked the crane nest (album sheet).
• Two gibbons playing on a tree of locks. Signed. Late work. British Museum, London.
• Two black gibbons on tree branches. Signed by the name of the artist. Prints of the Suna and Minsk periods. Much later work. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.
• Gibbon sitting on a stone near a bare tree. Album sheet. Song Song attributed to Yuanji. Published in the edition of Sauguin.

• And (last name)

• Guo Jo-Xu. Notes on painting: what he saw and heard. - M .: Nauka, 1978.- 240 p. - S. 86-88.
• Zavadskaya E.V. Wise inspiration. Mi Fu , 1052-1107. - M .: Nauka, 1983 .-- 200 p. - S. 165.
• Barnhart R. M., Cahill J., Wu Hung, Yang Xin, Nie Chongzheng, Lang Shaojun. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. - London: Yale University Press, 2008 .-- 416 p. - ISBN 0-300-09447-7 . - P. 116-118.