When Wu Daozi was a teenager, he was lonely and poor. He studied calligraphy with the calligraphers Zhang Xu and He Zhizhang, but failed. Later, he became angry and attacked painting, and gradually mastered the wonderful method of painting. Because of his hard work and eagerness to learn, when he was not weak, he was already poor.
At the age of 20, he was already famous. The emperor of the Tang Dynasty called him into the palace as a court painter and renamed him Daoxuan. As a royal painter, he can't paint without the order of the emperor. In this way, on the one hand, it is a constraint and restriction for an artist with a strong sense of common people, on the other hand, he has got the most generous living conditions, no longer wandering around, and can display his artistic talent.
Wu Daozi is generous and likes to paint when he is drunk. Legend has it that when he painted the round light on the top of the Buddha's head in the mural, he did not use a ruler, but used a pen. When painting in longxing temple, the audience was packed. He paints quickly, like a whirlwind, in one go. Chang 'an, the capital at that time, was the cultural center of China, which gathered many famous literati and painters. Wu Daozi often stays with these people to promote each other and improve their skills.
Wu Daozi's life, mainly engaged in the creation of religious murals, the theme is very rich, there are propaganda teachings, including Liang Wudi, Pi Hou and other figures. He painted the Bodhisattva as himself in the murals in the north corridor of the West Courtyard of Qianfu Temple, which is the same as that of Han Gan who later wrote Zhen and a line of masters in religious murals. He was free to process the world of God without being bound by religious teachings. He doesn't want to stand in the corner of the Buddhist country as a provider of God, but is willing to dominate the land of God as an ordinary painter. He can drag dignitaries into hell, which shows that he is contemptuous of religious theocracy. Wu Daozi's landscape paintings are also very successful. Xuanzong sent him to Sichuan to inspect Shushan and Shushui and asked him to draw a draft and come back to paint. But he came back from an investigation in Shu, and there was not even a draft. Xuanzong blamed it, and he took his time. On the Datong Hall, he painted mountains and rivers, rocks and beaches, and wrote like a storm, Jialing landscape, which was 300 miles across, and won praise in one day. Its thin body painting method is the ancestor of future generations.
Wu Daozi is an all-round painter, who can do anything with figures, ghosts and gods, landscapes, pavilions, flowers and trees, birds and animals. At the same time, Wu Daozi is the founder of China landscape painting. He created a landscape with far-reaching meaning between his pens, which made the landscape an independent kind of painting, thus ending the vassal status of landscape as the background of figure painting.
Wu Daozi's outstanding achievements in painting art are due to his deliberate innovation and courage to create. His two words are recorded in the famous paintings of past dynasties: everyone is close to expectation, but I am away from painting, and everyone is willing to be like an image, but I am away from its vulgarity.
This shows his unconventional and bold spirit of innovation in painting. Therefore, his works have become a model for painters to learn, and his paintings are called Wu family samples. Therefore, Zhu Jingxuan, a Tang Dynasty painter, commented on the modern painters of the Tang Dynasty in the preface to the famous paintings of the Tang Dynasty. However, he was lucky to be good at his name. However, Wu Daozi was able to be unique in the world and could be traced to Lu and Gu.
Wu Daozi also promoted the art of painting, taught his disciples carefully, and passed on his superb skills to the next generation, making the art of painting succeed others. According to the records of the illustrated treasures and the famous paintings of past dynasties, he had many disciples, among which Lu Jia, Li Sheng, Zhang Zang, Han Qiu, Zhu Yao and Zhai Yan were famous. Han Qiu defiled himself with Dan Qing, and learned from Wu Daoxuan, especially from Taoism. Zhu Xi studied under Wu Daoxuan, which is also wonderful. Wu Daozi told his disciples by words and deeds, either asking them to recite formulas, study colors, etc., or asking them to copy his drawings, or to fill in colors according to his instructions. There is such a record in the famous paintings of past dynasties: every time Wu Sheng painted, he put pen to paper and went there, making more pictures of Yan and Zhang Zang.
Sometimes, when Wu Daozi painted a mural, he only sketched it, and left the rest to his disciples to finish. In the revered temple in Luoyang, Zhai Yan finished the transformation of the Tibetan scriptures painted by Wu Daozi. Wu Daozi's painting art has a profound influence on the painting in the Tang Dynasty. He is respected by painters as a master and a painter.
The appearance of Wu Daozi is a glorious page in the history of figure painting in China. He absorbed folk and foreign painting styles and established a new national style, which is called Wu Jiaxiang by the world. As far as figure painting is concerned, Wu Zhuang's painting style shines on the painting world with a new national style.