Page 75 - Christies March 15 2017 Fujita Museum

CHEN RONG
AS CATALOGUED IN

SHIQU BAOJI

SIX DRAGONS

Scholar-oficial painter Chen Rong is best known for his paintings of dragons. Since ancient
times, dragons have been associated in China with rain and water and since the Han period
have been a symbol of the emperor. Their connection with water is expressed here by the watery
environment of clouds, mist, and waves in which they bend and twist. Not only did the artist employ
wet ink and dark tones in this painting, but he also used a unique method of spraying ink across the
surface to heighten the moist efect. As discussed by Jennifer Purtle in “The Pictorial Form of a
Zoomorphic Ecology: Dragons and Their Painters in Song and Southern Song China,” the connection
between Chen Rong’s paintings and rain was not just symbolic but his pictures were efectively used
to summon rain as a part of rituals (in Jerome Silbergeld and Eugene Y. Wang, ed., The Zoomorphic
Imagination in Chinese Art and Culture, Honolulu, 2016, pp. 253-288). Moreover, the strong contrasts
and intermingling in this painting of light and dark, empty and densely painted, and dragons that are
dynamic and ones that quietly, echo these creatures’ Daoist associations.

陳容，南宋畫家、書法家，以畫墨龍著稱。在中國，龍自古為神聖祥瑞的象征，具有掌管風雨的能力，自漢
朝以來亦為中國帝皇的象征。龍與水的聯繫緊密，畫中霧氣繚繞，飛龍騰躍雲天，所過之處雲煙昇騰，氣象
萬千。據說陳容畫龍的過人之處，在於其能夠潑墨成雲，噀水成霧，用乾濕水墨從不同角度展現了濕潤的
視覺效果。裴珍妮（Jennifer Purtle）所著《獸形生態的視覺形式：中國宋朝的龍畫與畫家》一文中提到，
陳容筆下的龍與降雨的關聯，不僅局限於象征意義層面，他的畫作亦被運用在呼風喚雨的儀式中（謝柏軻
Jerome Silbergeld與汪悅進編，《中國藝術文化中的獸形想象》，檀香山，2016年，第253-288頁）。畫
面上構圖張弛有度，氣勢驚人，光影明暗形成了強烈的視覺對比，騰飛的龍的形象躍然紙上，亦暗喻了龍的
形象與道家文化的聯繫。

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