A brief history of landscape painting

Landscape painting, referred to as "landscape". A kind of Chinese painting, which mainly depicts the natural scenery of mountains and rivers.

We selected the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties, Five Dynasties, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, and modern times to show you the unique charm of landscape painting.

In the painting art of pre-Qin and Han dynasties, natural landscape factors were bred, but it was still only the background and foil of the mainstream position of figure painting. It broke away from the vassal status and then formed an independent landscape painting, which began in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The formation and establishment of landscape painting is the infiltration of Wei-Jin demeanor, the inevitability of advocating nature, the awakening of literati's individual consciousness and people's aesthetic perception of natural landscape. The most typical representative of the development and change of landscape painting in this period is Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

The landscape in Gu Kaizhi's handed down work "Ode to Luo Shen" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty was only used as the background of the character story painting, and the gradual independence of landscape painting did not tend to be completed until the late Southern and Northern Dynasties. The reason for this is also determined by the main task of painting in this period-serving the church and the country, "knowledge depends on painting mirrors." This is also a major feature of painting at that time.

A picture of women's history

Gu Kaizhi in Eastern Jin Dynasty

Compared with the landscape paintings in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the landscape paintings in the Sui Dynasty have undergone great changes, such as "the trend of peaks, if the whole landscape is decorated with rhinoceros knots, or if the water can't be flooded, or if the people are bigger than the mountains, they are all attached with trees and stones to reflect the shape of the land, then if they stretch their arms and fingers", the shapes and relationships of different scenery in the picture have been well handled. It shows that the observation and understanding ability and performance skills of natural scenery at that time were greatly improved than before.

"You Chuntu" Sui Zhanzi Qian

Silk, turquoise, 43 cm high and 80.5 cm wide.

Existing Gallery of Beijing Palace Museum

You Chuntu is a painting created by Zhan Ziqian, a painter in Sui Dynasty. This is the only painting handed down from generation to generation by the painter, and it is also the oldest picture scroll in the world so far, with the words "Zhan Ziqian You Chuntu" inscribed by Song Huizong. The painter emphasized mountains and rivers with turquoise, depicted the foot of the mountain with clay gold, filled and dyed the trunk with ochre, looked at the panorama from a distance, and arranged the characters properly, which was the first in the Tang Dynasty and was very representative in early landscape painting.

A picture of a pavilion on a sail.

Don Li Sixun

Coloring of silk books

10 1.9 x54.7 cm

Qing Palace Collection in Taipei National Palace Museum

The Tang Dynasty was the heyday of the development of feudal society in China, and the culture and art in this period developed vigorously as never before. Although the early landscape paintings still have traces of breaking away from the characters' stories, they also inherited the youthful and meticulous performance technique system, but the focus has been clearly focused on Taoist interpretation and historical stories, deliberately expressing the beauty of mountains and rivers and the beauty of spring, expressing the feelings of mountains and rivers, and expressing the literati's pursuit of mountains and rivers at that time.

Kuangtu

Hao Jing in the Five Dynasties

Longitudinal 185.8cm, transverse106.8cm.

Now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

The Five Dynasties is an important period for the development of landscape painting. In the Tang Dynasty, ink painting or turquoise was the mainstay. On the basis of writing mountains and rivers or turquoise on the barrier, some painters went deep into nature and created real and vivid mountains and rivers in the north and beautiful mountains and rivers in the south of the Yangtze River. The former is represented by Tonghuan, and the latter is the first to promote Dong Ran. Hao Jing was born in a scholar-bureaucrat family. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, he lived in seclusion in Taihang Mountain. He is good at painting mountains and rivers in the northern region, and his masterpiece Crazy Record is his masterpiece.

Song Litang

Hidden in the National Palace Museum in Taipei

Wanhe Song Feng Tu

The Song Dynasty famous painter's "Loose Wind and Wide Valley" is the representative work of Li Shanshui before crossing the south. Together with Guo's Early Spring Picture and Fan Kuan's West Mountain Picture, it is called the three masterpieces of painting in the Song Dynasty. The Map of Wanhe and Song Feng was collected by Neifu in Song Dynasty, Jia Sidao, Ming Dynasty, Liang Qingbiao and Neifu in Qing Dynasty, and it is contained in Shiqu Baodi.

Because of the complicated ethnic relations and the low status of Han people in Yuan Dynasty, literati used seclusion as a means to escape social politics, but it implied the essence of pursuing beauty in artistic creation, which also made Yuan Dynasty landscape painting have the characteristics of pursuing lofty and unconventional, and the painting center was far from Kyoto. In the process of pursuing elegance, they found and developed the characteristics of southern painting school.

Mountain game waiting for protocol map

Liao wuming

Coloring of silk books

Length 106.5 cm, width 54 cm.

Collection of Liaoning Provincial Museum.

Shan Ye et al. was unearthed in Liao Tomb No.7 Yemaotai, Faku County, Liaoning Province in 1974. The picture shows steep peaks, dense fir and pine, and locked halls. Two people are playing chess on the ridge. The winding path outside the mountain gate is secluded. An elderly man on crutches, followed by two children, a gourd and a piano bag, came to the mountains for an appointment, cleverly forming an intriguing picture of hermit life. There are not many scroll paintings handed down from generation to generation in Liao Dynasty. Although there is no author's name and mark, the map of waiting for a contract in the mountain field was unearthed from a tomb in the early Liao Dynasty, and its production date can indeed be verified. This painting provides first-hand information for studying the mutual influence between the Central Plains and the painting art of Qidan.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were many painters with novel painting styles. Painters in Ming and Qing dynasties were flexible and changeable, and their composition no longer followed the traditional pattern, emphasizing free arrangement and aesthetic feeling of supervision, and highlighting the interest of pen and ink.

Autumn scenery in the mountains.

Shi Tao

With the development of society and the change of cultural environment, China's landscape painting has gradually entered a new aesthetic state. Contemporary landscape painting, like traditional landscape painting, is the embodiment and representative of the spirit and aesthetics of this era. It is influenced and restricted by the network era characterized by numbers and information, showing a three-dimensional and diversified development pattern.