So what is the real "night white"? ? An ancient painting of Tang Xuanzong and Zhao Bai, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA, perfectly answers this question. The name of this painting is White at Night, which was painted by Han Gan, a painter of the Tang Dynasty, for Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty.
In the picture, "Night White" is tied to a stake, with its head held high and its hooves rattling. But you will also see that although this horse is handsome and vigorous, it is a disabled horse. Why? Because it has no tail. According to experts' speculation, The White Picture at Night, which has been handed down to this day, is not entirely written by Han Gan. The war horse in the picture has been broken from the neck to the left torso, and the existing second half should only be a supplement for future generations. Although Mei-yu is slightly flawed, this picture is still impressive and does not lose tang style. Excellent display of Han Gan's brushwork.
Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty once married Princess Yihe to the King of Dayuan Ningyuan in the Western Regions. To this end, Ning Yuanwang specially presented two "bloody BMWs" to Xuanzong. Those who like horses like these two horses very much, and they are named "Yuhua Banner" and "Zhao Yebai" respectively. Among them, this horse "Zhao Yebai" not only accompanied the glorious period of Tang Xuanzong, but also accompanied him through the most down-and-out period in his life in the "An Shi Rebellion", so he was particularly loved by him. So he instructed Han Gan, a famous horse painter, to paint a picture of "white hair shining at night" and pass it on to future generations. ?
Han Gan, a painter in Tang Dynasty. According to legend, when I was young, I worked as an employee in a restaurant, taking wine delivery as my profession. I showed my talent in painting in an accidental experience of delivering wine to the poet Wang Wei, and later I studied painting with Cao Ba for more than ten years with the support of Wang Wei. He is good at drawing portraits, figures, ghosts and gods, flowers, bamboo, especially horses, and attaches importance to sketching entities. Called into the palace and sealed as a "sacrifice." After that, he studied painting with Chen Hong, a famous horse painter in the palace. At first, he followed the rules and stayed in the simple pursuit of object morphology. Later, Han Gan often went to the stables, carefully observed the habits of horses, compared and found out the personality characteristics and action rules of each horse, recorded all kinds of horses, and pursued the spirit of horses. After a long time, people were surprised that Han Gan often entered the stables and even moved to the stables to eat and live with the keepers. Han Gan replied, "I learned to draw horses. All the horses in the stable are my teachers. " In order to have a deeper understanding of the horse's habits, he often observed it for hours at a time, making the specific details that other painters did not understand clear and unforgettable. After such a long time, the various shapes of horses are naturally displayed on the paper when painting. People praised Han Gan's horse as a horse that could run on the painting, and called it "God Horse" because it painted the inner mental state of BMW that the painter couldn't draw at that time. ?
The image of Han Gan in "Night White" was asked to create "Night White", and the composition went straight to the theme. The whole painting only depicts the image of "night white" in the middle of the picture. "Zhao Yebai" was tied to a ten-edged horse pile behind him, but it obviously didn't want to be bound. It was glaring and screaming and struggling. In particular, its flowing mane, towering ears, dilated nostrils and rising front feet all aggravate the tension of the picture. The painter outlined the outline of the horse with fine line drawing, and smudged the neck and four legs with light ink, fully showing the horse's strong figure and muscle texture. Delicate brushwork and dynamic modeling make people savor it, just like a fine horse. The blank part of the picture left an imagination space for the audience, as if the horse was about to break free and disappear into endless reverie. Although the whole picture is tense, I won't feel scared after reading this volume. The seemingly thin and simple picture is actually full of rich plots and feelings. Han Gan's pen is concise, and the ink line drawing is completed. The lines are thin and powerful, outlining the outline of the horse. The body part of the horse is slightly rendered in light ink, showing the figure, streamline and dignified manner of the horse. This is exactly what the painter got through long-term practice and observation. It is also said by Jingu Kaizhi that the vividness is all blocked. ?
Han Gan's horse painting is different from the previous Han and Jin abstractions, and also different from the later Song and Yuan Dynasties. During the Han and Jin dynasties, horses were mostly bone-shaped, which shows that horses have infinite strength. For example, the bronze horse unearthed in Maoling, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, has upright limbs, a small head and a long neck, and upright ears like bamboo. Take the dragon shape as the pursuit goal and transcend reality. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Maduo painted horses with lines, but did not emphasize the structure, lacking the three-dimensional sense of painting horses in the Tang Dynasty. Moreover, Mongolian horse breeds are the main description objects. Because of its small size, the picture lacks the strength and momentum of Tang Ma. Only in the Tang Dynasty, due to the early Southern and Northern Dynasties, Zhang Sengyou of the Liang Dynasty painted "convex and concave flowers" by the method of "contrast between light and shade", which enhanced the three-dimensional sense of the painted object. And influenced by the sculpture art of Central Asia and India, it attaches importance to the proportional relationship of objects. Coupled with the prosperity of the Silk Road and the establishment of the capital of the western regions, Ma Liangbao entered China directly and went straight to Wang Ting. Therefore, the beautiful horses in Arabia and Europe, coupled with the light and dark painting techniques just introduced to China, make the magical Ma Baojun vividly presented on the gorgeous picture scroll of the Tang Dynasty, fully demonstrating the aesthetic tendency and expression techniques of the Tang Dynasty, which are different from those of previous dynasties. Because Han Gan's painting skills are connected with spirit, there are also many stories reflecting spirit. For example, Zhang Yanyuan's Notes on Famous Paintings in the Past Dynasties in the Tang Dynasty recorded: Lushan Mountain Rebellion, Pei Ai's horse died, and the Han army died. Suddenly, someone called the ghost messenger and invited a horse. Han Jun drew a horse and burned it. Hell, one day I'll bring a horse to thank you. It feels like this. ?
There is also a legend in Youyang Miscellanies in the Tang Dynasty: At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, someone took a horse to see a horse doctor, saying that there was something wrong with the horse's foot and asked for 20 strokes of treatment. Horse hair looks like bones, which is not common in horse doctors. He smiled and said, "Ma Jun is as big as a horse painted by Han Gan, but there is nothing solid about a real horse." Because the horse owner was asked to go around the city, the horse doctor followed. Suddenly, he was surprised when he was on duty in Hangan, and said, "It's really my colorist." You know what you are doing if you know what you are doing at will. So I rubbed my horse and it tripped because it hurt my front foot. Do things in different ways. If you want to give up, just look at the horse book he drew, and your feet are a little short of ink, knowing that you are drawing psychic. The money that Dr. Ma got was mud money. All the above stories have one thing in common, that is, Han Gan painted a horse like a real horse. The poet Wang Ling even said in the poem "Huangfuren Daohan Ganma": "It is said that Sanma died on the same day and died in anger." And the well-known work "Night White Picture" is also a household name in the history of painting. There is the word "Yanyuan" at the top left of the picture, which is the title of Zhang Yan Garden, a famous art historian in the Tang Dynasty. His works include "Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties", which recorded the paintings before and after the Tang Dynasty in detail. The inscription "Painting White Nights in Han Gan" is an inscription by Li Yu, Queen of Southern Tang Dynasty (its font is Jin Cuodao, which is as famous as Evonne's thin gold body in Song Dynasty). On the lower left is the inscription of Mi Fei in the Song Dynasty, and it is stamped with Zhu's seal, which is a natural and true reward. Li Junxi collected seals in the Northern Song Dynasty, Qiu Gu and Xiang Dao by Jia Sidao in the Southern Song Dynasty, and Xiangzijing and others collected seals in the Ming Dynasty. Xiang Ziyin and Wu Shuo in the Southern Song Dynasty all left inscriptions on their works, followed by Su Wei in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties and Shen Deqian in the Qing Dynasty. This painting was collected by Xiang, An Qi and others. After entering the Qing Dynasty, it was included in the imperial palace, and the Night White Map was also deeply loved by Emperor Qianlong. Up to now, he has written many poems. In the turbulent late Qing Dynasty, the "night sketch" flowed out of the Qing Palace, and two more seals were added to the picture scroll, namely "Prince Gong" by Pu Ru, a famous painter in modern times and a descendant of the Qing Dynasty, and "Tibetan seal by an expert painter in Pu Ru". After the Japanese army occupied Beijing in 1930s, Japanese invaders plundered China's cultural relics, and Xinyu Pu was worried that his collection of paintings and calligraphy might be in danger. In addition, the decline of the royal family made the living expenses of the palace expensive. After many twists and turns, through the intermediary of Shanghai antique dealer Ye, "Night White Map" finally fell into the hands of British collectors at the price of 10 thousand silver dollars. After that, the painting was transferred from Edgeworth Beresford David to the Japanese, and then to the Americans after World War II. Finally, 1977 Tommy Tam Foundation donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it has been collected ever since.