The Difference between China Traditional Landscape Painting and Western Impressionist Landscape Painting

The difference between China traditional landscape painting and Western Impressionist landscape painting lies in the different techniques, one emphasizes freehand brushwork and the other emphasizes realism.

China's traditional landscape painting was formed in the Jin Dynasty, matured in the Song Dynasty and flourished in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, forming many painting schools, including meticulous painting, freehand brushwork, ink painting, heavy color, light crimson and other painting methods, forming a unique aesthetic system. The early "six laws" are the rules that are still used today. Without these rules, it is basically divorced from Chinese painting. The first characteristic of China's landscape painting is the bone brushwork, that is, the line is used as the modeling means. The second feature is the scattered perspective, that is, there are multiple focuses in a work, which is called "business position" in the "six methods". Therefore, the creation of China's landscape paintings is free and not controlled by the real scenery. According to the actual scenery, the author can organize the picture with his own artistic language to achieve the desired effect, which is in line with the stipulations of Chinese painting. The third feature is to downplay the natural light and shadow effect, pursue the unique artistic conception of Chinese painting, and create the artistic effect of "habitable, tourable and enjoyable", which is an index of China's traditional landscape painting appreciation, and pursue a kind of artistic effect that is more like than like.

Landscape painting in western painting is a kind of painting based on scientific and artistic modeling system. Before the invention of photography technology, it was the most important way to describe natural scenery in the west. Its main features are scientific focus perspective and natural light and shadow effect, highly restoring natural scenes, and reflecting the light and shade effect of natural scenes through color changes. The final effect of the work is also consistent with the scenery seen by the painter. Later, the artistic treatment method was also chosen under the principle of being loyal to the realistic scenery, which is the characteristic of landscape painting in early western painting. After the invention of photography technology, landscape painting lost its dominant position, so Impressionism and Expressionism painting appeared, drawing lessons from some oriental artistic expression methods. However, they have not divorced from the main spirit of western painting, focusing on realism, but the method of using colors with pens is no longer confined to form and tends to be unrestrained.