Wang Wei
(link to poetry page)

Although Wang Wei was not considered a great painter during the Tang era, it was Wang Wei who established the future style of ink paintings. Before Wang, paintings from this period were commonly highly decorative, using the traditional bright malachite greens of the immortals, azurite blues and golden backgrounds. The thumbnail is what tang paintings used to look like. Wei dispensed with the golden highlights and bright colors, using a softer blue green wash and a more lyrical, less structured type of brush stroke. Although none of Wang Wei's paintings survived, during the Ching dynasty the artist Wang Shih-min did a reproduction of Wang Wei's Snow over Rivers and Mountains. . The Snow over Rivers can be located at the Taipei Museum web site. From this painting we can see how Wei started to turn landscape painting into not just a mere decoration or an attempt to paint realistically but a means of emotional communication.

It was said that Wang Wei added a type of emotionalism that had not been previously expressed in landscape paintings. A literati poet-painter-calligrapher Su Shih said, " in reading Wang's poems one sees pictures, upon seeing Wang's pictures one senses poetry." Wei wrote an essay called The Discussion of Painting; in it he said " Painting does not simply delimit many areas as in a map it also deals with the spiritual qualities inherent in nature that affect an on looker." Paintings during the Tang period had spiritual connotations due to the interest in Taoism but no real poetic quality. Wei's softer style of painting would influence future artists like Ching Hao, Ma Yaun, Hsia Kuei, Kuo Hsi and many others.

While Wang Wei was instrumental in setting up the future tone in landscape painting and was known as " the father of monumental ink landscapes." Ching Hao added to future painter's repertoire by developing new methods in painting and giving hints as to what to concentrate on while painting a landscape. He said "a painting should obtain both an outward appearance (huo) and inner substance (shi) in order to delimit truth (zhou) in things." He believed that six elements must be present in a painting to achieve this type of balance:

"Spirit, life breath (ch'I) Harmony, rhythm (yun) Mental concentration (ssu) Seasonal aspect (ching) Brushwork (pi) Tonality (mo)

Hao also invented a new method of painting rocks. Although he liked Wei's style of painting he wanted his landscapes to have a more textured feel, so he invented the ts'un-fa method of painting, in which he could model his rocks to give them solidity. He would not glide on one thin layer of wash but instead, meticulously dabbed and dotted the ink on to buildup his rock forms. (Loehr 90) There is only one existent monumental painting that has been attributed to him, "The K'uang-lu Mountains."

Unlike Ching Hao, Juran was more concerned with what his painting said than with what painting methods he used. He attempted to blend into his paintings concepts found in Buddhism and Taoism (link) Juran's works have spiritual themes because he was not only an academic painter but also a Buddhist monk. One work of his that regards Taoism is Seeking the Tao in the Autumn Mountains. His work was highly prized by connoisseurs, like Mi Fu who said that his depiction of turbulent water was so lifelike that it would "cause peoples hair to stand on end." There is some doubt as to how many paintings he created: 136 paintings are attributed to him in the catalogue of the Emperor Huizongs collection. Among these works are six sets of six panels, four sets of four panels, eight triptychs and twelve double panels. Juran mainly painted landscape scrolls and murals. While he was a scholar at the imperial Hanlin academy he painted one of his most famous murals, Smoky Mountain Vaporous at Dawn (Yanlan xiaojing). (Grove online) Although he is usually classified under the Five Dynasties, information about him can also be located under the Sung period, and he is considered to be one of the founders of the Southern Sung style of painting.

Ku Hsi (ca 1000-1090)

Kuo Hsi was a member of the Imperial Academy during the reign of Ying Tsung and Shen Tsung. (Loehr 147) Although he set forth step-by-step methods for creating landscapes he was a painter that starved off of natural inspiration and painted in a Zen like manner. Before beginning a painting he would first meditate for several days. Suddenly, he began painting, frenziedly splattering and smoothing out the ink until his vision had been realized. Although his manner of painting resembled the unfettered painting method used in the Tang Dynasty, Kuo was an artist of originality. It was partially due to Kuo's influence that at the Northern Sung painters abandoned the more naturalistic landscapes and started to use blank space and misty settings to elicit a more emotional type of painting. (Fong P.92)

What made Kuo instrumental in setting forth the standards for landscape paintings was that he wrote down how he had achieved such inspiring paintings. His son, Kuo Ssu, made a compilation of his father's teachings in a treatise called, Lin ch'uan kao chih (Lofty Messages of Forests and Springs.) (Loehr 147) In this treaties he recorded his father's suggestions on the composition of the painting, how to obtain different perspectives, specific effects and properly draw rocks, trees, rivers and mountains. This book essentially created a semi blueprint that future artists could use to create landscapes. (Fong 93) Unfortunately not many works by Kuo Hsi have survived. He was such a prominent court painter under the emperor Shen-tsung that the emperor Hui tsung felt that he had to get rid of Kuo Hsi paintings to be able to foster a new, more academic method of painting. Thus he promptly had all of the Kuo's paintings removed from the palace. There is even a shameful story of Kuo's paintings being used as dust rags. Fortunately some of his works survived the emperors cleaning frenzy so we have several paintings to demonstrate how Kuo applied his guidelines to painting. (Fong 102) Some wonderful examples of Kuo Hsi's artwork are Lowlands with Trees, and Early Spring.

Liang K'ai

Liang K'ai began his career as a professional painter at the emperor's imperial academy. His career was illustrious there; he even received the golden painting belt (jindai), which was the highest honor a painter could receive. He served at academy from 1201-1204, until he had to leave due to problems with alcohol. Upon leaving he sought solace with the Chan Buddhist monks in Liutong si, which was the center for Chan painting. His interaction with the Chan monks changed his painting style for the better; he converted from a purely academic style to a freer more dynamic method of painting. Some paintings that he created after he left the academy were: Buddha Leaving the Mountains, The Scholar of the Eastern Fence, Chopping Bamboo, Monk riding a MuleTearing Up a Stutra, Li Po Chanting a Poem, and Poet Strolling by a Marshy Bank. Throughout his paintings he used a new method of painting called spontaneous reduced brush (jianbi) technique. Later on in his career he also started to combine some calligraphic strokes to his paintings. His influence extended past China to Japan where his methods had a monumental impact on the Zen painters.

Chao Meng-fu was foremost a calligrapher. Even though he was a descendent of the first Sung emperor he served as the head of the Hanlin academy that had replaced the imperial academy. Despite some of the bitterness surrounding him because he was serving under a Mongol ruler he was still considered a premiere calligrapher and painter. He was a popular painter because he had a fresh new style that combined painting and calligraphy with older forms of painting. Using his knowledge of calligraphic techniques he dispensed with the soft Sung washes, and instead used the strong thick lines that were more prevalent in calligraphy, thereby revolutionizing painting.
In this poetic statement he used calligraphic terms to describe how to paint.

"Rocks in flying white (script), trees as in seal script;
When painting bamboo, one applies the spreading-eight (late clerical) method.
Those who understand this toughly
Will realize that calligraphy and painting have always been the same."

He believed that calligraphy and painting were connected, because he learned how to paint by practicing calligraphy and copying ancient painting scrolls; however, he thought that he never could find enough landscape paintings to become a really proficient landscape painter. On one of his hand scrolls Twin Pines Against a Flat Vista (Shuang-Sung P'ing-Yuan) he wrote " Ever since my youth after practicing calligraphy, I have toyed with some small paintings, but landscape is one subject that I have not been able to master. This is because I have not managed to see one or two masterpieces by Wang Wei, the great and small general Li (ssu-hsun and Chao-tao,) and Cheng Ch'ien of the Tang period. As for the works of the five Dynasties masters, such as Ching Hao, Kuan T'ung, Tung Yuan, and Fan K'uan, who succeeded one another, all of these great masters works are absolutely different from the styles of more recent painting袁" Despite his modesty in his ability to paint landscapes he actually produced many landscapes such as, The Joys of Fishing at a River Village, Autumn Colors at the Ch'iao and Hua Mountains, The Water Village, Poetic Thoughts on the Rise of Autumn, Winding River and Layered Ranges, and The Peach Blossom Fishing Boat. In many of his works he tries to combine calligraphic techniques with the techniques established by Li Ch'eng, Kuo His, and Chu-jan. He said of his work, "What I paint seems abbreviated and rough, but connoisseurs realize that it is close to the ancients, and so consider it beautiful."

The painting The Peach Blossom Fishing Boat is supposedly based on a Tao Yuanming poem about a fisherman that loses his way and finds himself surrounded by peach blossom trees. He finds ancestors there who had lost all sense of time. By Chao Meng fu choosing to depict this poem visually there can be seen a renewed sense of escapism during the Mongol rule, and a revival of the quest for immortals. With this illustration of a poem we can see how closely poetry and painting have become by the Yaun period. Chao Meng fu was one of the first landscape painters to depict fishermen in flowering streams. There are actually two interpretations of Chao Meng Fu's original Fishing in a River in Blossoming Time, the one represented here is by Wang Yuan-chi, a Chin'g artist. Wang Yuan-ch'i's version appears to represent Meng fu's calligraphic style of painting more accurately. In Yuan-chi's adaptation the lines appear to be bolder darker, with thick sharp lines on the roofs and pine trees by the shore. Which is consistent with the calligraphic manner of painting. Also the mountains appear to emulate Chu-jun's method of painting mountains, with the round dotted foliage. This is significant, because Chu-jan was an artist that Chao Meng Fu had studied. Adding these two aspects with the fact that this is a more rougher and simpler style of painting this appears to be a somewhat accurate representation of the type of work that Chao Meng fu created.