Picture screen of Yuan Yao’s summer resort in Lishan

[Yuan Yao’s Lishan Summer Resort Screen]

The Lishan Summer Resort Screen, painted by Yuan Yao in the Qing Dynasty, silk version, color setting, 237 cm vertically, 31.7 cm horizontally and 57.4 cm horizontally
The title of this picture is: “Yuan Yao intended to be in the Han Dynasty in February of Xinmao”, with the seal of “Yuan Yao’s seal” and “Zhao Daoshi”
Lishan Mountain is located in the southeast of Lintong County, Shaanxi Province. In the Tang Dynasty, a palace was built here. There are hot springs in the north of the mountain. It was originally named Hot Spring Palace. When Emperor Xuanzong Li Longji of the Tang Dynasty, it was renamed Huaqing Palace. Xuanzong and Yang Yuhuan, the favorite concubine, often play in the summer here, and perform the swansong of love through the ages. According to this historical fact, Yuan Yao gave full play to his imagination and drew this magnificent and beautiful picture. The pavilions in the picture are hidden among the mountains, reflecting each other; The majesty of the rocks and the ingenuity of the buildings set off each other
Yuan Jiang and Yuan Yao are not pure painters. Their contribution to architectural painting is to create a new style that organically combines landscapes and pavilions to form an integrated whole. The buildings and pavilions in their paintings are either based on solid mountains and rocks, or against the background of vast rivers and lakes. The mountains and stones are carved with axes, ghost faces and cirrus clouds, creating a real and credible space for the fairyland-like pavilions. The exquisite and magnificent buildings also add color and vitality to the indifferent mountains and rocks, thus giving the pavilions a profound artistic conception and grand momentum, creating a gorgeous and exquisite painting style, It is unique among Yangzhou painters in the early Qing Dynasty. The spirit of Yuan Yao, who was not attracted by the time flow in the era of literati landscape painting at that time, was even more valuable. His architectural paintings, both in quantity and artistic level, were incomparable in the history of the development of the whole painting pavilion at that time and later generations.