Ding Yuchuan
Wild brushwork, Ma-Xia style landscapes
Ding Yuchuan(丁玉川) was a mid-Ming Dynasty painter from Linchuan, Jiangxi. His landscape paintings followed the styles of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, and he was also good at figure painting. His brushwork was described as 'hasty' and 'wild,' and Liu Xu wrote a poem saying that wherever his cleverness reached, it naturally created skilled work. Li Kaixian ranked him alongside Dai Wenjin and Wu Xiaoxian, commenting that his paintings were like 'a wealthy household, with doors, utensils, and things, but nothing exquisite.' Ding Yuchuan mainly worked in Shandong and Beijing and may have lived past the age of ninety-two. In his later years, he was considered part of the Zhejiang school. Many of his extant works have been modified, making authentic pieces hard to identify. His subjects often involved expressive landscapes and the pastoral life of scholars. Besides "Fishermen at Leisure," Ding Yuchuan's surviving works include "Landscapes," "Later Red Cliff," and "Fan Paintings." It was traditionally believed that works such as the Five Dynasties' Jing Hao’s "Visiting a Friend in the Autumn Mountains," Song dynasty Xia Gui’s "Qin and Crane Scholar," and Yuan dynasty Wu Zhen’s "Later Red Cliff" were later attributed to Ding Yuchuan.