Ahura

《林玉山作品捐贈特展》，國立台灣美術館，2019。

Curator / Hsueh Yen-Ling

Lin's another painting Flowers of Spring and Summer (1928) showed a corner of the garden covered in different varieties of flowers such as silk-cotton, green camphor, bead tree, hibiscus flower, confederate rose, and orchid. Instead of drawing contour lines of these objects, Lin stressed their painterly expression, hue variation, the stereoscopic interplay between light and shadow, as well as the sense of depth in the composition, thereby offering the viewers an experience as if they could feel the mysterious flow of air in the garden. This work marked an application of the innovative approach promoted by Yokoyama Taikan (橫山大觀, 1868-1958) and his disciple Hishida Shunsō (菱田村草, 1874-1911) in the Meiji era, characterized by blending Pleinairism into nihonga. This approach broke the rules of Chinese ink wash painting that had long influenced nihonga. The objects were presented not so much with contour lines as with composition, air, light, and paint of varying density, so as to create an illusory atmosphere as in a mist. It was satirically called morotai (blurred painting style) after its debut, yet soon acclaimed as the epochal attribute embodied in the modernist revolution of nihonga. Lin was substantially nurtured by such westernized nihonga during his studies at the Kawabata Painting School in Tokyo and the Tokyūsha (東丘社) private painting school founded by Domoto Inshō (堂本印象, 1891-1975) in Kyoto. Most of Lin's Eastern gouache paintings created during the 1920s and 1950s followed the mokkotsu (沒骨)  style, such as A Lotus Pond (1930), Pomelo (1931), Memory of My Hometown (1935), Shade of Tree (1933), and Wild Ducks (1935), as well as A Chinese Starling in the Willow Shade (1950) and Flowers and Birds (1950) included in this donation exhibition. By dint of their respective layered, colorful layouts, these paintings commonly exhibited a captivating, stereoscopic quality, vigorous interplay between light and shadow, a strong sense of depth, and an aesthetic atmosphere.

Lin demonstrated complete mastery of natural landscapes as well as flora and fauna. Thanks to his consummate skill at sketching from nature he developed through lifelong practice, Lin was not stumped by the subjects of quick-witted raptors and ferocious beasts like eagle, falcon, hawk, tiger, lion, monkey, and war dog. Lin's sketches from nature drawn in different periods well reflected his diligence in this aspect. In order to depict pheasants, he even stayed in the farm or simply bought some and kept them at home, so that he could capture their spirit after close observation. He also visited the zoo and animal training sites several times for recording their postures, movement, expression, and ecology. All this had been internalized by Lin as the elements for his later works. Sparrow and tiger were emblematic of Lin's oeuvre that rendered him unrivaled in the art world. In his article "Personal Reflections on Admiring Sparrows," Lin mentioned that he has been a sparrow buff since his childhood. He even hid behind heaps of straw, observing sparrows fighting over food, waging struggle, flying, and twittering. His consciousness of sketching from nature urged him to grasp the ecology of sparrow and depict it in his paintings. Lin's works Rural Landscape in Autumn (presented at the 6th Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition in 1951) and Sparrows (1986) faithfully portrayed the scenes of sparrows pecking, hopping, and chirping in straw and bamboo groves. What Lin drew were not only the very forms of his objects, but also their natural ecology. Lin had become familiar with the image of tiger since his tender age. He had ever drawn traditional paintings of tiger for the Feng-Ya Xuan's customers when he was young. A circus toured to Chiayi when Lin was 12 or 13 years old, from which he noticed the difference between real tigers and those he usually saw in paintings. He ergo modified the image of tigers in his own works, and pondered on the relations between paintings and natural realities. Fierce Tiger Descending from the Mountain (1923), a painting that Lin finished at the age of 17, was selected for the Chiayi Prefecture Industrial Competitive Exhibition. With the inscription of "Lixuan," this painting was Lin's debut of blending his empirical observation into his imitation of traditional Chinese ink wash paintings. The tiger in this work is of a natural and powerful build. It roars and stares fiercely, raising its tail and ready to fight. The momentum given by the tiger makes itself an intimidating existence. In addition, the composition of Lin's another work Painting of Tiger (1986) gave prominence to a vicious tiger springing out of bamboo groves. Putting one forepaw in front of another, the tiger's forward momentum and the pattern on its fur considerably enhance the aesthetic three-dimensional appeal of its strong build. Dynamic tension mounts around the overawing tiger, whilst the rays of light in the background provide a sense of speed and a charged atmosphere. The pulsating rhythm in the dynamism of his graceful brushstrokes in this work manifested Lin's absolute mastery of painting in his twilight years. Furthermore, commissioned by Chiu Nien-Tai (丘念台) in 1953, Lin redrew the "Yellow Tiger Flag" The original's dimensions is 250cm x 250cm (a replica of 82cm x 92.5cm is displayed in this exhibition). In 1974, Lin drew the Yellow Tiger Flag again with ink and color, representing the confident tiger's curvy back with a single bold and powerful brushstroke, which would be impossible without his great proficiency in sketching from nature.

Lin's figure paintings presented a riotous profusion of content, subject, and technique. However, they've received relatively little scholarly attention than the rest of his oeuvre. His rarely seen oil painting Portrait of Father (1940) is included in this donation exhibition. Painted in Western realistic style, this work portrayed his father's chiseled, masculine facial features and indomitable spirit with simple, poised brushstrokes in a tawny shade. The background came in shades of blue and black, so as to create an alluring chiaroscuro effect. Besides, Lin depicted the decorative pattern on his father's clothes by making good use of the grain in the surface of the wooden backing material beneath the thin layer of oil paint. The whole composition conveyed an amiable image of his father. Lin's figure paintings could be traced back to his sketch studies of various objects and postures in the 1920s and 1930s, including busts of girls, women and the elderly, people reading books, farmers, students in classroom, ox-carts and figures, geishas, infants, people on bicycles, women in cheongsams, and people aboard trains. In 1922, when Lin was 16, he drew a portrait of his younger brother Lin Ying-Jieh (林英傑) with ink and color as practice. This portrait featured the meticulously depicted physiognomy of his brother, and the shape of face held a three- dimensional appeal in light shades of color, in which Lin's effort to portray the figure's "real" spirit found expression. Created by Lin in 1937, Maternal Love (My Wife Carrying My Daughter in Her Arms) showed the charm of a caring mother, and Rui-Jiao (瑞椒) Carrying Her Sister in Her Arms illustrated the gift of siblings. Both portraits conveyed a strong feeling of affection and caring, outlining the figures with confident, flowing brushstrokes. His wife's concern and care shown in her eyes for her baby and the infant's curious gaze at the marvelous world were particularly highlighted in these two works. In January 1945, his middle son Lin Hu-Xiong (林虎雄) died of falling down the stairs at the age of 4. After this tragic accident, Lin resisted his bereavement with great difficulty, portraying his son's figure carefully with pencil. As a painter, Lin was adept at portraying his family's life and affection. Besides, a precious poster is included in this donation exhibition. Titled Poster of Working in the Sugarcane Field, this poster was painted by Lin in 1936 under the commission from the Chiayi District Sugar Cane Improvement and Evaluation Association. Lin firstly painted it with gouache pigment, and then printed it as a poster. In terms of the use of color as well as the nuts and bolts, the tall, straight and leafy sugar canes occupy both sides of the composition, denoting the excellent results of variety improvement. In the middle are two farmers in work clothes. One stands and wears a conical bamboo hat, and the other sits on the ground with a conical bamboo hat in her hand. The towels on their shoulders and the teapot on the ground symbolize their tiring physical work. Lin vividly revealed the figures' characteristics in a down-to-earth yet elegant fashion. A modernized sugar refinery with a smoking chimney appears in the background. A reward announcement is included in the poster, indicating the historical context within which farmers were encouraged to increase sugarcane production, insofar as to satisfy the demand for alcohol (refined from cane sugar) as a raw material of aviation fuel. Lin's depiction of his family and plebeians was as exquisite as lively with the stress on their guileless, amiable looks in their quotidian existence. Simple, elegant and tolerant Taiwanese women had been a staple subject of Lin's figure paintings, in which their crucial role in the society as well as their qualities of hard-working and capable of overcoming adversity were positively reinforced.

Lin's paintings of historical figures were mostly created during his service as a young folk painter when Taiwan was under Japanese rule, such as A Portrait of Lord Guan (1925), Guan Yu (關羽), Guan Ping (關平) and Zhou Cang (周倉), Yue Fei (岳飛) Tattooed by His Mother, Han Yu (韓愈) Stranded by Heavy Snow at the Lantian Pass, and Bo Niu (伯牛) Being Ill, Confucius Visiting Him and Holding His Hand through the Window, as well as the illustrations he painted in the 1940s for the 2nd and 3rd volumes of Yang Kui (楊逵)'s The Tale of the Three Kingdoms and that in 1942 for the cover of the book Zheng Cheng-Gong (鄭成功). Lin's studies of the historical figures can also be seen in his sketchbooks in the 1940s, such as Lord Guan Sitting on A Chair, Historical Figure, and A Small Portrait of Yun Shou-Ping (惲壽平). This exhibition included three pieces of Lin's sketch on this subject, namely Zhou Lian-Xi (周濂溪) (1929), Saigo Nanshu (西鄉隆盛, Saigo Takamori) (1943), and Lin He-Jing (林和靖, 1934). Lin Bo-Ting (林柏亭) donated the first two pieces to NTMoFA in 2013 and the last one this time. Lin He-Jing (967-1028) was a Chinese hermit poet in the early Northern Song dynasty. This work featured Lin He-Jing at the center of the composition, looking slightly up at the plum blossom in the upper right corner. The beautiful, secluded and graceful bearing of plum blossom is clearly discernible. A quick-witted white crane perches in the lower right corner of the composition. Distinct from the ink wash style that Lin adopted in Zhou Lian-Xi, the work Lin He-Jing was drawn in a new nihonga style. Its coloring is as dense as elegant. The figure and the plum tree present an eclectic mix of chiaroscuro and three-dimensional appeal. The background lies in an extremely light color, so that it can convey the ethereal beauty and direct the viewers' focus onto the figure. In the early phase of his career, Lin experimented with multiple subjects and techniques without confining himself to specific styles. He not only inherited Taiwanese folk art, sinological traditions, and the teachings of Yokoyama Taikan, but also integrated them. into his paintings of historical figures. Besides, he reflected his ideal of leading a tranquil and simple life in his works Zhou Lian-Xi and Lin He-Jing. Moreover, he internalized the skill and ethos of the new nihonga that incorporated the property of occidental painting. In 1947, Lin painted A Portrait of Lord Guan for his brother who used it in worship, although Lin seldom tackled this subject in his adulthood. In this painting, Lord Guan sits at the desk and reads a book, whilst he gently strokes his magnificent beard. It seems to be a work of allusion to the classical story of Lord Guan reading The Spring and Autumn Annals at night. Different from the Buddha images he drew during the early stage of his career, this painting put a premium on Lord Guan's facial features, clothes and ornaments with ink and color, and projected his dignified, impressive and awe-inspiring appearance with smooth brushstrokes. Unlike ordinary worship images of Lord Guan that occupy the entire composition to show this martial sage's imposing manner, Lin deliberately shrank the figure's size to around half of the composition in this work. The image of a scholar general was also bestowed upon Lord Guan in this painting as a result of Lin's literacy in sinology and poetry.