Tang Xiaoxian: Hu Tinglu painted the four seasons as a gift

Tang Xiaoxian: Hu Tinglu painted the four seasons as a gift Phoenix City Tang Xiaoxian Hu Tinglu (1884-1943), a traditional Chinese painter who was once famous in the south of the Yangtze River, became famous...

Phoenix City Tang Xiaoxian Hu Tinglu (1884-1943), a traditional Chinese painter who was once well-known in the south of the Yangtze River, was well-known, also known as Hechan and Hegong. He was a member of the Xue family in Nanmen, Wuxi, Jiangsu. He was fond of reading poetry and painting since he was a child. He learned to paint flowers and feathers from Zhu Xunfu when he was young. However, Master Zhu died young and studied by himself. He first painted flowers and birds, and later worked on landscapes and figures. In his later years, he became famous for his finger-ink paintings. Hu Tinglu studied painting from Zhang Zixiang, Ren Bonian, Xu Wei, Chen Chun, Shen Zhou, Tang Yin, Ma Yuan, Xia Gui, etc., and calligraphy from Su Dongpo, Weng Fanggang, Wu Yushan, etc. His paintings are witty, natural and full of emotion; his calligraphy is precise, vigorous and elegant. In the 22nd year of the Republic of China (1933), Xu Beihong went to France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Britain and the Soviet Union to hold an exhibition of modern Chinese paintings. Hu Tinglu participated in the exhibition with two works, "Ink Bamboo" and "Lagerstroemia Bird". His handed down works include "Eight Scenes of Liangxi", "Imitation of Liuru Green Landscapes of the Tang Dynasty", "Pictures of Immortals and Birds", "Pictures of Listening to Cicadas", etc., as well as "Collection of Hu Tinglu's Paintings", "Collection of Poems on Hu Tinglu's Paintings", etc. It can be said that Mr. Hu Tinglu and our family have a long-standing friendship. My father, Tang Zhixuan, was fond of painting since he was a child, and he could imitate characters in novels so vividly. When my father was studying at the Wuxi National College, his foundation in Chinese studies was getting deeper and deeper, and he was beginning to gain proficiency in writing poems and calligraphy. The adults in his family wanted him to learn painting from Mr. Hu Tinglu. Seeing that my father was loyal and loyal, Hu also wanted to accept him as his disciple. Unfortunately, his father was suffering from trachoma eye disease at that time, so he had to give up his painting studies for the time being. In the 28th year of the Republic of China (1939), when his father married his mother Mi Yazhen, Hu Tinglu specially painted four colorful pictures of flowers and birds in spring, summer, autumn and winter, and put them in four glass frames and sent them as a congratulatory gift. In the spring, the painting is of peach blossoms in full bloom, with two orioles perched on the branches singing; in the summer, the painting is of lotus flowers in a pond, with a pair of mandarin ducks playing in the water beside the lotus leaves; in the autumn, the painting is of the fragrance of golden osmanthus, with a pair of thrushes looking at each other; in the winter, the painting of wintersweet is in bloom, with two white-headed weeping birds snuggling together. In these four freehand paintings, the flowers are beautiful, elegant and vivid; the birds have different expressions and are lifelike. The work combines material interest with emotional interest, making it truly one of the best paintings of its kind. The picture of flowers and birds of the four seasons has been hanging on the north wall of the study room at home. When the Cultural Revolution began in the summer of 1966, the Red Guards regarded traditional Chinese culture and art as the "Four Olds" and destroyed them. They came to ransack the house and took four paintings off the wall. Their whereabouts are still unknown. (2010.09.06)