Chinese Art History of the Qing Dynasty

Jade and gold jars made in the Qing dynasty, around the Qianlong period.

The Qing dynasty continued the tradition of honoring the Wu school from the late Ming dynasty, with the emergence of the so-called Four Kings, whose style of painting was referred to as the "orthodox school". However, the folk appeared a new style of painting, bold composition, unique, before the dynasty survivors Bada Shanren and Shi Tao is best known. In the mid-Qing Dynasty, Jiangnan region is rich, Yangzhou appeared in the area to sell paintings for a living of literati painters, painting and calligraphy are not commonplace, strange and innovative, later scholars will be one of the important eight called Yangzhou eight monsters.

The Qing Dynasty was also a period of gradual entry of Western painting, the most famous was Lang Shi Ning, who served in the court during the Qianlong period, but this Western trend did not affect the people. But China's only foreign port at that time, Guangzhou, appeared to specialize in oil painting for European merchants, this is the beginning of Western painting into the Chinese people. In the late Qing Dynasty, Shanghai was opened as a trading port and became an important port due to its location, which also drove the demand and development of oil painting. Chinese painters gradually learned Western painting methods such as perspective and used imported pigments to paint, which affected the style of traditional painting.

Shanghai replaced Yangzhou as the commercial center at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and the group of professional painters also shifted from Yangzhou to Shanghai, resulting in the emergence of the Haikai style, which can be regarded as the last lineage of traditional Chinese painting. At the beginning of the Civil War, the Gao Jianfu brothers absorbed the Western style of Japanese painting and created the Lingnan School of painting. Both of them represented a new style of painting combining Chinese and Western styles and made useful attempts for the development of Chinese painting. The prosperity of folk art in the Qing Dynasty is commendable. Woodblock prints, a traditional folk art variety, gained unprecedented development in the Qing Dynasty. Its production area throughout the north and south of the Yangtze River in some towns and villages, and the formation of Tianjin Yang Liuqing, Suzhou Taohuaowu, Weixian Yangjiabu and other rich local characteristics of the New Year's paintings. At the same time, Hangzhou gave birth to China's earliest art higher education institutions.

After the Xinhai Revolution, Chinese society underwent drastic changes, and traditional Chinese art developed again with the sudden changes of the times.