Ren Renfa

REN RenFa, 1254—1327, courtesy name (a.k.a. Chinese style name, or Zi) ZiMing, Pseudonym YueShan DaoRen (Taoist on the Moon Mountain), who was born in Songjiang (now a county of Shanghai City). He was an expert of irrigation works and a government official in that fields. REN drew some outstanding paintings of horses, people, flowers and birds. REN’s style is similar to artists in Tang Dynasty (608--907) and LI GongLing in Song Dynasty (1127-1279). He is one of the two artists of paintings of horses. The other one is Zhao Mengfu.

Chu Yu Tu (A Painting of Leading Horses out of Stable) On silk, With color, Height 32.4cm, Width 201.9cm, a collection of The Palace Museum, Beijing In this painting, three officials of royal stable are leading four horses out the stable. The painting has a very explicit Tang style (Tang Dynasty, 608--907). The people in the painting are dressed in Tang style costume. All these reflect that the artist admired the culture of Tang Dynasty. The people and horses are spread out in the painting, which is a main characteristic of paintings by the RENs.

At the end of the painting (left side), there are some words about the artist and the year of painting. “ZhiYuan GengCheng ChunWang San Ri (The third day in the second month of spring, 1280), Zuo ChuYu Tu Yu KeShi Tang (Draw “A Painting of Leading Horses out of Stable” at KeShi Tang—a room for poem), YueShan REN ZiMing Ji (YueShan—Moon Mountain, REN ZiMing—a courtesy name of the artist)”. And there is a poem written by the Emperor of QianLong (Qing Dynasty, 1736—1795), who also wrote some handwritings in the middle of the painting. This is one of the earliest works of REN (and the earliest one of his that exits), and was drawn in 1280 when he was 27.