THE CHINESE LANDSCAPE PAINTING
The whole world is very much grateful to China for it's contributions in art and painting, especially the landscape painting. The landscape painting is regarded as the highest form of the Chinese painting. By landscape painting, we generally mean the artistic work that depicts the physical world, natural sceneries like rivers, hills, mountains,valleys,forests, etc. ,where the major subject has a wide view with other components arranged coherently. The time from the Five dynasties period to Northern Song period (907-1127) is known as " The Great Age of Chinese Landscape".
The history of Chinese painting dates back to early imperial times, however, the landscape painting emerged with the beginning of Tang Dynasty. The Tang artists explored all the means to create images describing the world around them. They outlined the figure and adopted linear brushwork to produce a lively effect on figures. Gu Kaizi and Wu Daozi, were famous for developing very difficult line styles, the former using very fine but tough lines that seem to float without breaking, called "floating silk-thread lines" and the latter using strong "iron wire lines" to generate a sense of liveliness in figures.
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| painting from early tang dynasty source: wikipedia |
The great poet Wang Wei became the first painter to use ink only to depict a landscape scene, known as " shan shui" or "mountains and rivers" and also combined poetry with painting. Later the painters credited Wang with originating the use of texture strokes to fill in and give geological credence to his outlined mountain and rock forms.His way of painting with ink strokes defining the surface of mountains and effect of ink or pale indicating light and dark areas is completely different to the actual bluish-greenish color of landscapes.
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| painting by Wang Wei source: wikipedia |
By the late Tang Dynasty, Landscape painting had developed into an independent genre that expressed the universal longing of cultivated men to escape their mundane world to assimilate into nature. Such images also convey specific social, philosophical, or political beliefs. As the Tang dynasty crumbled, the concept of withdrawal into the natural world became a major thematic focus of poets and painters. Frustrated with the failure of the everyday life, cultivated men sought retreat within the natural world, like into the mountains to find a asylum from the dynamic disarray.
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| Painting from late Tang Dynasty source: wikipedia |
The Landscape painting reached a majestic height during the Song Dynasty. The Song Dynasty is divided into two halves: Northern Song and Southern Song. Landscapes of more subtle expression appeared. Lines with thin distances were drawn to show the surfaces of mountain disappearing into the mist. The artists made paintings that disclose the internal bonding between a man and nature.
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| Painting from Southern Song Dynasty source: wikipedia |
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| Painting from Northern Song Dynasty source: wikipedia |
Zhang Zeduan was the most famous artist in the Song Dynasty and mostly renowned for his painting 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Zhang's original painting reveals much about China of 12th century. It's myriad depictions of different people interacting with one another reveals the nuances of class structures , and the many hardships of urban life as well. Yi Yuanji also achieved a high degree of realism painting animals, in particular monkeys and gibbons. In this period , while some of the artists were attempting to represent three-dimensional objects , some others were using their skills in calligraphy to make ink paintings and hence encouraged the following painters to freely express their feelings and draw the inner feelings instead of superficial appearance.
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| Painting by Zeudan Zhang source: wikipedia |
The link below shows the way of Chinese landscape painting.
The artists of the following dynasties combined calligraphy and poetry with painting which helped them express their complete feelings than one form of art did. In the late dynasties of Imperial China, many individualists rebelled against the traditional way of painting .As a result, the artists started making the painting of both the traditional Chinese and Western forms. And, coming up to the time of modern painting , the artists solely started to adopt the Western form.
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| Painting from Ming Dynasty source: wikipedia |
References:
www.chinaonlinemuseum.com
www.britishmuseum.org
www.artrealization.com
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