There were so many outstanding painters in the Ming Dynasty that the number exceeded the Song and Yuan Dynasty. Throughout the Ming Dynasty painting transformation, technique undulated and went unconstrained.
From 1368 to 1644, the Ming saw the emergence of many schools of painting, including the Zhejiang School, Wu School, Flower-and-Bird Painting School, and Portrait School.
In the early period, Zhejiang School, who advocated Song painting, was the mainstream with adepts all over the imperial court and the common society. In the middle period, Wu School sprung up in Suzhou, which carried on the literati painting tradition.
In the late period, there was Flower-and-Bird Painting School, who stressed on independently expressing one’s nature and soul and exploited a new realm in a freehand style. Portrait School, whose paintings were either precisely lifelike or anemophily painted characters that took ugliness as beauty. Huating Landscape School vigorously advocated literati painting using lots of brush and ink.
The school of painting was on the move. Those who were once the pride of the heavens are like shooting stars in the night sky, creating the most precious paintings of mankind. They were Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin, and Qiu Ying.
1. Tang Yin （1470-1524）
Tang Yin was known for his painting talent in Ming folklore. He was born in Suzhou, a family of businessmen and his father ran a hotel. In the family, Tang Yin ranked the oldest, and he also had a sister and brother.
His works are famous for landscape painting, figure painting, and his creation of many paintings of the Spring Palace has also added to his reputation as a talented man.
Tang Yin was a disciple of Shen Zhou, founders of the Wu School in the Ming Dynasty. The style of his teachers’ work is shown in his paintings.
However, his paintings not only resemble master’s but also surpass him. Tang Yin’s most numerous and most accomplished paintings are landscape paintings. This is due to the fact that his footprints are all over the name Kawadayama, which provides a constant source of inspiration and material for his landscape paintings.
His paintings focus on the pavilions and gardens and the leisurely lives of the literati. It has the characteristics of a large scale and magnificent, small size and elegant, rich and diverse subject matter.
Tang Yin’s paintings are seldom dated and his style does not change regularly, so it is difficult to predict the time of painting and to divide the process of his style change according to time.
2. Wen Zhengming （1470-1559）
Wen Zhengming was born into a family of martial arts officials, and his father and grandfather were both famous scholar gentries at the time. His father, Wenlin, became the first Juren, which meant a successful candidate in the imperial examinations at the provincial level, in the family in 1472.
In contrast to his father’s smooth career, Wen Zhengming did not become a lowly official in the Ming Dynasty until he was 53. Four years later, after witnessing the corruption of Ming Dynasty officials, he made up his mind to leave the official world and focus on poetry, calligraphy and painting.
Due to his talent in painting and his perseverance, his paintings are sought after by many people, and a large number of people who want to buy his paintings gather at his doorstep every day.
Like Tang Yin, Wen Zhengming was a disciple of Shen Zhou, but they both surpassed their master in painting. He is well versed in various painting techniques and has an outstanding ability to control his brush. At the age of 80, he can still write in small print without fatigue and in a very fluid manner.
Wen Zhengming’s paintings were particularly popular during the Ming Dynasty, and in addition to being collected by collectors, there are numerous fakes of his paintings on the market.
3. Shen Zhou（1427-1509）
Shen Zhou was the leader of Wu School, who sought spiritual freedom and scorned the political reality of evil. He had been engaged in calligraphy and painting all his life rather than aspiring to be an official like so many of his friends.
He was born into a family of artists, which was an inherent advantage. At the age of seven, he was educated by Chen Kuan, and he formally studied painting with Liu Jue at the age of fifteen. Many of his teachers were famous painters of the Ming Dynasty. The study of poetry and painting was carefully guided by many strict teachers.
Shen Zhou is an all-around painter, specializing in landscape painting, flower and bird painting and figure painting. Some of his landscape paintings depict mountains and rivers and show the traditional landscape painting of the three distant landscapes. Most of the works depict the southern landscapes and gardens, expressing the leisurely life of the literati of the time.
He developed his own innovations on the basis of Song and Yuan painting, and developed the literati ink and brush painting techniques of landscape and flower and bird painting. Finally, he became the leader of the Wu School.
4. Qiu Ying（1494-1552）
Qiu Ying was born into a poor family and was once forced to give up his studies. However, his talent for painting and efforts have made him one of the few painters in the history of Chinese art of common people’s origin.
Qiu Ying had made great progress after Zhou Chen had become his teacher. In his youth, he became acquainted with many famous painters of the Ming Dynasty as a result of his paintings. Wen Zhengming and Tang Yin were his good friends.
He was good at imitating the paintings of the Tang and Song Dynasties. The paintings he imitated out were almost as difficult to discern as the originals. His most famous imitation is the Qingming Shanghe painting.
In addition, Qiu Ying was good at figure painting and paid attention to the carving and depiction of historical subjects. His paintings absorbed the techniques of Ma He Zhi and the Yuan people.
In Conclusion
In the mid to late Yuan Dynasty, literati and artists mostly gathered in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, such as Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zan and Wang Meng were known as “The Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty“. They all lived in the hay days of the Yuan and all of them had some unpleasant experiences.
Similarly, Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin and Qiu Ying all lived in the mid-Ming Dynasty. They had all achieved a number of recognizable achievements in the field of painting, so in their honor, the four of them became “The Four Masters of the Ming Dynasty”.
So far, whenever news of an auction house auctioning paintings related to them has spread. The final sale price is often surprising.
