“Yuchuangmanbi” and the Dragon Venation in the Painting of Wang Yuanqi

Abstract

The imperial court of Qing Dynasty did not set up the enthusiasm of the so-called official painting academy, and the function of the court painter was accomplished by offering worship to the inner court. At the beginning of Qing Dynasty, Wang Yuanqi, the orthodox Nanshufang member of the Imperial Academy the “Yuchuangmanbi” after the later generations, including self-preface and nine painting works on the aspects of artistic conception, business position and so on. In discussing the chapter layout of landscape painting, Yuan Qi clearly discovered the theory of dragon venation of landscape painting. In Wang Yuanqi's painting theory, the dragon venation formed a sharp contrast with that of traditional geomantic omen; the dragon venation theory of landscape painting also became the most important point of Wang Yuanqi's painting theory. The dragon venations of landscape painting are the Chinese temperament of landscape painting, and the cultural dragons and pictorial venations of landscape painting are the most important cultural symbols and artistic vocabulary of Chinese landscape painting.