I. ORIGINS
The origins of painting in China are mingled with the origins of writing. Written characters are, in fact, derived from pictography or picture writing, those in use at the present time being only developed and conventionalized forms of primitive drawings. The early books and dictionaries give us definite information regarding this evolution. But while history bears witness to this ancient connection, we do not come into contact with actual evidence until the third century of our era, through the bas-reliefs of the Han dynasty, and in the fourth century through the paintings of Ku K’ai-chih. Here we find by no means the origin of an evolution but, on the contrary, the last traces of an expiring tradition.
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II. BEFORE THE INTERVENTION OF BUDDHISM
The bas-reliefs of the Han dynasty are almost all comprised in the sculptured stone slabs embellishing mortuary chambers and of these the artistic merit is most unequal. [4] Their technique is primitive. It consists in making the contours of figures by cutting away the stone in grooves with softened angles, leaving the figure in silhouette. Engraved lines complete the drawing.
The subjects are sometimes mythical and sometimes legendary. There are representations of divinities, fabulous animals, scenes of war and of the chase and processions of people bearing tribute. At times the great compositions display imposing spectacles, a luxurious and refined array. Now and then attempts at pictorial perspective are joined to some unrelated scene.
All this is in direct conflict with the technique of bas-reliefs and leads to the surmise that the models were drawn by painters and copied with more or less skill by makers of funeral monuments.
PLATE VI. PAINTING BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST
T’ang Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
This impression is confirmed if certain carved slabs are compared with a painting by Ku K’ai-chih, of which we can judge by means of a copy made in the Sung period. [5] One of the scenes of this long scroll leaves no possible misapprehension as to the pictorial origin of the Han bas-reliefs. Its subject, a river god on a chariot drawn by dragons, is similar in composition to the models used by the artisans of the third century.
We have, however, better testimony than a copy made at a later period. The British Museum, in London, is the owner of a painting attributed to Ku K’ai-chih. The reasons impelling us to believe in its authenticity are weighty, almost indisputable. [6] [B] We therefore accept it here and will endeavor to define the work of one of the greatest painters of China in the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century.
The painted scenes are inspired by a work of the third century containing admonitions addressed to the ladies of the imperial palace. The striking characteristics of these compositions are the lightness and delicacy of style, the poetry of the attitudes and the supreme elegance of the forms. Heavy black tresses frame the ivory faces with refined and subtle charm. The voluptuous caprice of garments in long floating folds, the extreme perfection of the figures and the grace of gestures make this painting a thing of unique beauty. Only through the cultivation of centuries could such spiritual insight be attained.
If the copy from the collection of Tuan Fang recalls the bas-reliefs of the Han period, the painting in the British Museum is related to the bas-reliefs of Long-men, which date from the seventh century and of which M. Chavannes has published photographs. Therefore we may say that the style of Ku K’ai-chih exemplifies the distinctive features of Chinese painting at a period extending from the third to the seventh centuries. [7]
It should also be noted that toward the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, the painter and critic Hsieh Ho formulated the Six Canons [8] upon which the far-eastern code of Aesthetics is founded. These Canons introduce philosophical conceptions and technical knowledge which also presuppose long cultivation, for it is only after rules have been brought to reality in a work of art that they are formulated into a code. Therefore when Buddhism appeared in China it found there a native art whose value was proved beyond question by a long succession of masterpieces. After having exhausted every manifestation of strength and vigor, this art had arrived at expressions of extreme refinement and profound and appealing charm, closely verging on the disquieting dreams of decadence.
PLATE VII. GEESE
Sung Period. British Museum, London.
III. THE INTERVENTION OF BUDDHISM
Chinese books state that between the fourth and the eighth centuries “the art of painting man and things underwent a vital change.” By this they alluded to the intervention of Buddhist art, which made its appearance in China toward the fifth century in the form of the Greco- Indian art of Gandhara, already modified by its transit across Eastern Turkestan. This by no means indicates that purely Indian origins might not be found for it. At Sandhi, as well as in Central India and at Ajantâ such characteristics are preserved. But the Greek dynasties which had settled in northwestern India in the train of Alexander, had carried with them the canons of Hellenistic art. The technique and methods of this art were placed at the service of the new religion. They gave to Buddhist art—which was just beginning to appear in the Gandharian provinces—its outward form, its type of figures, its range of personages and the greater part of its ornamentation. [9]
Buddhism found the expiring Hellenistic formula which had been swept beyond its borders, ready at hand at the very moment the new religion was gathering itself together for that prodigious journey which, traversing the entire Far East, was to lead it to the shores of the Pacific. Once outside of India, it came into contact with Sassanian Persia and Bactria. With Hellenistic influences were mingled confused elements springing from the scattered civilizations which had reigned over the Near East. Thence it spread to the byways of Eastern Turkestan.
We know today, thanks to excavations of the German expeditions of Grünwedel and von Lecoq, the two English expeditions of Sir Aurel Stein and the French expedition of M. Pelliot, that in that long chain of oases filed with busy cities, Buddhist art was gradually formed into the likeness under which it was to appear as a finished product in the Far East. Here it developed magnificently. The enormous frescoes of Murtuq display imposing arrangements of those figures of Buddhas and Bôdhisatvas which were to remain unchanged in the plastic formulas of China and Japan. Meanwhile conflicting influences continued to be felt. Sometimes the Indian types prevailed, as at Khotan, at others there were Semitic types and elements originating in Asia Minor, such as were found at Miran, and at length, as at Tun-huang, types that were almost entirely Chinese appeared.
The paintings brought from Tun-huang by the Stein and Pelliot expeditions enable us to realize the nature of the characteristics which contact with China imposed upon Buddhist art. It had no choice but to combine with the tendencies revealed in the painting of Ku K’ai-chih. The painter trained in the school of Hellenistic technique drew with the brush. He delighted in the rhythmic movement of the line and the display of a transcendent harmony and elegance of proportion such as are seen in the frescoes of Eastern Turkestan. Perhaps through contact with China—herself searching for new expressions—but probably through a combination of the two influences, Buddhist painting, at the opening of the T’ang dynasty, gives us heavier types in which compact and powerful figures take on a new character.
From then on we perceive the nature of the great change to which the early books refer. Chinese painting had already known the geni and fairies of Taoism, the Rishi or wizards living in mountain solitudes, the Immortals dwelling in distant isles beyond the sea. It now knew gods wrapped in the ecstatic contemplation of Nirvana, with smiling mouth and half- closed eyes, revealing mystic symbols in a broad and apostolic gesture. It had more life-like figures, attendants, benign and malignant, terrifying demons. Before these impassive gods, in a fervor of devotion it bent the figures of donors, men and women, sometimes veritable portraits. With even greater breadth it portrayed the disciples of Sakyamuni, those anchorites and hermits who under the name of Lohan [10] have entered into Chinese Buddhist legend. Indian priests with harsh, strongly marked features and wrinkled faces, preachers of a foreign race, disfigured by scourging or else the calm full visage of the ecstatic in contemplation,—such are the types that appeared. Chinese painters took up the new subjects and treated them with a freedom, an ease, and a vitality which at once added an admirable chapter to the history of art.
IV. THE T’ANG PERIOD—SEVENTH TO TENTH
CENTURIES
The T’ang dynasty was the really vital period of Chinese Buddhism. Among the painters who gave it its highest expression Wu Tao-tzŭ holds first place. His memory dwells in history as that of one of the greatest masters in China and legend has still further enhanced the might of his genius. It is highly probable that his work is entirely destroyed, but by the aid of copies, incised stones and wood engravings of the twelfth century, an idea of the painter’s conception can be formed. He seems to have been the creator of a Chinese type of Kwanyin, the Buddhist incarnation of mercy and charity. Drapery covers the high drawn hair. She is attired in the harmonious folds of a plain and ample garment and expresses supreme authority, the sublimity of divine love.
If to these fragments of an immense plastic production is added the analysis furnished by the written records, we can define with some degree of certitude the place occupied by Wu Tao-tzŭ in the history of Chinese painting. The books state that the lines from his brush fairly vibrated; all united in marveling at the spirituality emanating from forms thus defined. He adhered almost exclusively to the use of powerful ink-lines and denied himself the use of any color, whether scattered or prominent, which would have robbed his painting of the austerity which was the source of its surpassing feeling. But in order to appreciate the full value of the new ideas introduced by Wu into Chinese painting, it is necessary to understand the exact nature of the technique that was in practice up to the seventh and eighth centuries, at the opening of the T’ang dynasty.
PLATE VIII. WHITE EAGLE. SUNG PERIOD
Collection of R. Petrucci.
At that time there prevailed the analytic, painstaking, detailed and very considered drawing that is common to all periods preceding great constructive work. This technique admitted the use of two fundamental methods: one called double contour, the other contour or single contour. The method of double contour was applied chiefly to the drawing of plant life in landscape. It consisted in outlining leaves or branches by means of two lines of ink placed in apposition. The space thus enclosed was filed with color. Any peculiarities of formation, knots in wood and veins in leaves were added subsequently. The name of single contour was applied to drawings wherein a single ink line outlined the object, the space enclosed being then filed with color.
If the application of these analytic methods was sometimes carried to the extreme of delicacy it never became labored. Throughout its entire evolution the art of the T’ang period is characterized by a sense of the magnificent. Once the study of forms was exhausted, this type of work was bound to be superseded. Wu Tao-tzŭ profited by the work of his predecessors. Combining in a single stroke of the brush, vigor and an eclectic character of line, with values and fluidity of tone, he brought to a supreme unity the two great principles by which things are made manifest in all the magic of their essential structure. But it must be understood that this patient investigation of forms was not limited to preparing the way for a single master. The logical outcome was an independent movement to which the origin of modern Chinese painting can be traced.
“Painting has two branches,” the books say, “that of the North and that of the South; the separation occurred in the T’ang period.” These terms Northern School and Southern School must not be taken literally. They serve merely to characterize styles which, in the eighth century, liberated themselves from methods demanding such close study and exact definition of forms. The style of the Northern School is strong, vehement and bold; the style of the Southern School is melancholy and dreamy. The ideal of Northern China, impregnated with barbarian elements, is brought into contrast with that of Southern China, heir to an already ancient civilization, and under the spell of Taoist legends and the bewildered dreams of its philosophers. [11]
PLATE IX. HORSEMAN FOLLOWED BY TWO ATTENDANTS
Sung Period. Collection of A. Stoclet.
Li Ssu-hsün and his son Li Chao-tao (eighth century) are considered to be the founders of the Northern School. The paintings attributed to them show the character which the Northern style preserved up to the Ming period and which was to be emphasized to the point of brutality at the hands of certain masters in the Yüan period. At the outset, in its brilliancy and precision, the Northern style held to a certain refinement of line; later the line is drawn with a firm and powerful brush and strong colors are applied almost pure.
In direct contrast the Southern style is made up of half-tints, with a feeling of reserve and intentional restraint, which gives it, with equal power, at times a more appealing charm. The lines are pliant, immersed in shading, color is suggested in a subtle fashion and, in contrast to the almost brutal emphasis of the North, it finds expression in chiaroscuro and concealed harmonies.
The foundation of the Southern School is attributed to a great landscape painter of the eighth century, Wang Wei. Nothing could better determine his tendencies than monochrome [12] painting in Chinese ink. According to the records, this was first practiced by him. It constitutes what in China, as well as in Japan, is called the literary man’s painting and is, in reality, quite closely related to calligraphy. The variety of shadings and relative colors of objects depend entirely upon the tones of ink washes. Wang Wei seems to have treated monochrome mainly from the standpoint of chiaroscuro, in his search for an atmospheric perspective which should be both fluid and ethereal. It appears that the accentuation of lines according to rule that is seen later on, where forms are synthesized—sometimes to an excessive degree—was only a derivation of the work of Wang Wei and caused by the intrusion of calligraphic virtuosity into the domain of painting.
When we arrive at Wang Wei, landscape is treated as a special subject and with its own resources. It was he who discovered the principles which govern the fading of colors and forms in the distance, and who formulated the laws of atmospheric perspective. Paintings in his style are all executed in a predominating color which the Chinese call luo-ts’ing, a mineral color of varying shades ranging from a malachite green to a lapis-lazuli blue. It will be seen why luo-ts’ing gave its name to the style of Wang Wei.
By means of bluish tints he painted the distant expanse of landscape. Mountains forming screens in the backgrounds and masses of trees lost in the distance, are all indicated by the azure tints which intervening layers of air give to remote objects. But as the foreground is approached, rightful colors begin to prevail and the azure tints are subtly graded, passing into a fresh and brilliant green amongst wooded declivities, and into the natural hue in the foliage of trees. Often heavy mists, spreading at the foot of high mountains, veil the outlines and still further emphasize the feeling of limitless space.[13]
PLATE X. LANDSCAPE IN THE STYLE OF HSIA KUEI
Sung Period. Collection of Martin White.
But when a master has carried his study of the fading of colors and of their relative values thus far, he must have considered not only the element of color itself, but also the collective tones which color is capable of expressing. From this to monochrome painting in Chinese ink is but a step; historical testimony shows that Wang Wei took this step. By the simple opposition of black and white, and through tone values and gradations of shades, he endeavored to create the same feeling of atmosphere and space which he had been able to express with luo-ts’ing. No original picture remains to inform us to what extent he succeeded, but by means of monochrome paintings of the Sung period which owe their inspiration to him, the importance of the reform accomplished, and the tendencies manifested in those lost works of art may be divined.
Another master whose work can be defined with sufficient accuracy to cite as an lustration of a different aspect of the history of painting during the T’ang period, is Han Kan, who lived in the middle of the eighth century and who is celebrated as a painter of horses. The sculptured stones of the Han dynasty, especially the admirable bas-reliefs of the tomb of Chao-ling, representing the favorite coursers of the emperor T’ai-tsung, show the manner in which artists, from the third to the seventh centuries, were capable of studying and delineating the postures of the horse. It is therefore not surprising to find a great animal painter in the eighth century. Beyond question he was not the first. The written records have preserved the names of several of his predecessors and while the honor of having been the great founder of a school was attributed to him, it is possible that this refers only to an artistic movement bearing his name, of which he was not the sole representative.
But the work of Han Kan and the unknown artists grouped around him, proclaims a powerful tradition, a well grounded school of animal painters which had attained the highest eminence. It was destined to exert a strong influence upon painters of horses in the Yüan epoch and even when, later on, this great tradition is seen disappearing, cloying and insipid, amidst the mannerisms of the Ming period, it will still retain sufficient power to carry thus far a reflection of the vigor and vitality attained in the great periods.
The painting of Flowers and Birds, and Plants and Insects appears to have been already established at this time. The flowers and plants are drawn according to the methods of double contour and single contour, worked over and brought out with that intensity of analysis to which allusion has been made. The bird is caught in its most subtle movement, the insect studied in its essential structure.
Thus we see that Chinese painting had extended its investigations in every direction and had solved the problems found along its path. It had absorbed foreign influences, altered its conception of the divine and found a new type of figure. It had endowed landscape painting with all the resources of atmospheric perspective and had established the two essential styles of the North and the South. The painter was master of the visible; his thought dominated form and was able to express itself with freedom.
V. THE SUNG PERIOD—TENTH TO
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
The T’ang period had been the golden age of Chinese poetry. It had witnessed an extraordinary outburst of religious fervor, and the overwhelming domination of Buddhism. It had, moreover, triumphantly re-established the unity of the empire and to the pride of intellectual activity it could add the pride of might and dominion. But the same cannot be said for the Sung period. From a political standpoint its history is one of cumulative disaster. Ancient China retreated by degrees before the thrusts of the barbarians, until the great thunderbolt of Genghis Khan’s conquest, reverberating with formidable echoes throughout all Asia, announced the approaching downfall of culture in the red dawn of a new era.
The Sung culture, totally different from that of the T’ang period, was, however, swept forward to its culmination. It would seem as if, under the menace of the barbarians, the mind had set for its goal the development of ideas embryonic in earlier work, formulating them in haste and arresting them finally in perfect yet sad images, in which the heights attained were haunted by the shadow of impending ruin.
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PLATE XI. LANDSCAPE BY MA LIN
Sung Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
The dynasty opened with a classical reaction against new ideas and witnessed a return to Confucian philosophy, with its conception of the State. But centuries of history had not rolled by without effect. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the ancient writings were no longer understood with their original meaning. A whole series of philosophers, of whom the last is Chu Hsi (thirteenth century), had formulated a composite doctrine resulting in what might be called an official philosophy, which has dominated to the present day. Some bold spirits, however, opposed this reactionary codification, struggling in vain to give a positive and firm structure to the doomed empire. Their influence appears to have been considerable. Just as the old heterodox philosophy was being stifled by the dry and colorless metaphysics of the conservatives, it was awakened to new life by the painters, who gave it a stirring interpretation in their work.
The period of technical research was past. At first, with care and patience, forms had been determined by drawing. Color had remained a thing apart, regarded as a work of illumination and quite distinct from drawing. Then study was extended still further. Color came to be viewed in the light of shades and tones and became one of the means for the expression of form; it became the very drawing itself,—that which reveals the basic structure.
Wang Wei represents the moment when art, emancipating itself from problems already solved, had conquered every medium of expression. Such is the tradition which he bequeathed to the Sung artists, who were destined to add thereto such supreme masterpieces.
The Sung painters were haunted by the old philosophical beliefs as to the formation of the universe. Beyond the actual surroundings they dimly perceived a magic world made up of perfect forms. Appearances were but the visible covering of the two great principles whose combination engendered life. They believed that, in painting, they did more than to reproduce the external form of things. They labored with the conviction that they were wresting the soul from objects, in order to transfer it to the painted silk. Thus they created something new, an imaginary world more beautiful than the real world, wherein the intimate relation of beings and things was disclosed,—a world pervaded by pure spirit and one which was revealed only to those whose thought was sufficiently enlightened, and whose sympathies were sufficiently broad, to understand and to be stirred.
The painters of the line of Wang Wei during the Sung period, devoted themselves chiefly to the development of painting in monochrome. They pursued the study of relations of tones and values of shading up to the limit of extreme delicacy, and if they mingled color at all with their subtle evocations, it was with a feeling of unequaled restraint. They dwelt for the most part in intimacy with Nature. Fleeing from the cares of court and city, they retired into mountain solitudes, meditating for long periods before taking up the brush to paint. Thus they portrayed those mountains enveloped in mists, wherein was revealed the harmony of the two principles which control the universe. From the depths of valleys misty vapors arose and cedars and gigantic pines reared their majestic forms, while, on the threshold of a thatched cabin upon some rocky plateau, a hermit deep in meditation contemplated the vast expanse of a landscape of august grandeur.
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PLATE XII. MONGOL HORSEMAN RETURNING FROM THE HUNT
By Chao Mêng-fu. Yüan Period. Doucet Collection.
Sometimes, turning to plant forms, they painted the bamboo in black and white. A single masterly stroke sufficed to draw the cylindrical stalk from one joint to another, or the pointed leaves which are so quivering with life that we seem to hear the plaintive voice of the wind “combed,” as the Chinese writings express it, “by the reeds.” Or again, when a flower was the subject, they suggested it with a simplicity that presupposes a scientifically exact study of forms. It was by no means the splendid image which they sought to grasp but the soul itself; at one time the flower barely open in all its enchanting freshness, at another the softened petals drooping in languid fashion, revealing a splendor still present but soon to fade; at times the dew moistening the leaves, the snow shrouding them with its purity, or the slow monotonous rain beneath which they drip, motionless. These paintings are always instinct with deep poetic feeling.
At the hands of the Sung painters the school of landscape and monochrome technique attained a level which will never be exceeded. The masters of this period are numerous and are frequently represented by works of almost certain authenticity. It seems useless to assemble here names which will convey no meaning to the European reader. It will suffice to illustrate by a few great figures the three centuries of history during which Chinese landscape painting reached its culminating point.
Tung Yüan and Chü Jan are considered by the critics as having founded a special school in the great tradition of Wang Wei. Their paintings were quiet in coloring and were executed with broad strokes in an impressionist style. These works must be viewed from a distance to see their apparent violence merge into extreme elegance. They furnish a complete demonstration of the laws of atmospheric perspective, with its feeling of distance and infinite space, in which forms are immersed. Here we find evidence that these painters were the first to attempt the arrangement of lines according to rule, which led ultimately to calligraphic painting.
Among the heads of schools cited in the Chinese writings Ma Yüan and Hsia Kuei of the Sung dynasty must be placed in a class by themselves. Both of these masters lived at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. Their style can be described with accuracy since original examples are extant—both by themselves and by their disciples—in which their characteristics are fully revealed.
Ma Yüan is classed with the Southern School by reason of his restraint in the use of color, his greatness of conception and his technical treatment of forms. But he brings to his work a virility in which the influence of the Northern School is plainly discerned. He has a broad stroke and a masterful manner which place his works in the front rank of all Chinese painting. His mountainous backgrounds rear themselves with fierce energy. His old pines, with branches wreathed in vines, would suffice alone to define his style, so freely do they express the force of plant life and the proud defiance of the aged tree. He loved the mountain solitudes to which he gave a new imagery, so authoritative and so perfect that it served to create a school.
The influence of Ma Yüan was felt by his brother and by his son, Ma Lin. Although the death of the latter occurred under the Mongolian dynasty, he was an exponent of Sung art. The fierce energy of the old master gives way to a somewhat more melancholy and gentle quality in his son. There is the same restraint in the handling of the brush, the same reserve in the use of color, but the landscape stretches out into deep and dreamy vistas that are indescribably poetic. The melancholy of autumn, the sadness of flights of birds that circle in the evening light, the feeling of seclusion and silence, such are the things in which this poetic spirit finds its joy, true heir of the master mind whose genius found expression in the wild aspects of nature.
The school of Ma dominated the entire subsequent period and his influence extended as far as Korea, where traces of it were still to be found as late as the fifteenth century. As the history of Korean painting becomes better known, we shall be able to say with more accuracy what it owes to other Chinese masters; but in so far as those mentioned are concerned, their influence appears to have been sufficiently strong to impress a certain type on fragmentary works from Korea which have become known to us recently.
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