A Brief History of Chinese Painting

Chinese Painting, also known as National Painting for short, was known as Danqing in ancient times, which refers to the traditional Chinese art of painting in general, and is one of the four arts of qin, qi, shu and painting. In a narrow sense, Chinese painting refers to ink painting with green and green colors, while in a broader sense, it refers to the art of traditional Chinese styles of murals, brocade paintings, embroidery, heavy colors, ink paintings, stone carvings, and even paintings on New Year's paintings and ceramics, and it also includes modern Chinese oil paintings and watercolor paintings.

221 to 220 B.C.

Early Chinese paintings were painted on silk until the invention of paper in the first century B.C., when silk was gradually replaced by cheaper materials. By the time of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, painting and calligraphy were the most highly regarded arts in Chinese court circles, and most of those works were painted by noblemen and scholars. The tools of the trade were brushes made of animal hair and Chinese Ink made of pine soot or animal glue. The works of famous calligraphers were highly valued throughout Chinese history and hung on the walls like paintings.

220 to 581

During the Six Dynasties, people began to appreciate the original beauty of paintings and to write about them, expressing Confucianism such as the rites of husband and wife, father and son, but also pursuing the beauty of the image and the immortal quality. For example, Gu Kaizhi's masterpieces, "Women's History" and "Luoshen Fu", show the bones of the clear image of the wind and the immortal, not eat earthly fire.

581 to 960

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, court figure painting was greatly developed[2], as can be seen from the works of the artist Zhou Fang, whose subjects surrounded the figures of the imperial palace, such as the emperor and the ladies, whether it is Lady Guo's Journey to the Spring or The Hairpin of a Lady, both of them are filled with splendor and grandeur[1]. During the Southern Tang Dynasty, the beautiful realistic approach to figure painting reached its peak. During this period, Wu Daozi, known as the Sage of Painting, appeared and brought about a shift in the development of Chinese painting. Wu Daozi's use of the line technique known as "orchid leaf drawing" to represent things changed the Gu Kaizhi school of painting that was prevalent at the time. From the Tang Dynasty onwards, the number of landscape paintings began to increase and were divided into two schools, Li Zhaodao's "green landscapes" and Wang Wei's "ink landscapes"[3].

960 to 1368

During the Song Dynasty, depictions of landscapes began to appear more vague. Painters used blurred outlines to show distant scenes, while the shapes of mountains were hidden in thick fog. The focus of the paintings was to show the idea of the unity of heaven and man in Taoism and Buddhism. Famous painters during this period include Zhang Zeduan, the author of Qingming Shanghe Tu, and Xia Gui, who is famous for his landscape paintings [4]. In addition to the painters who aimed at the expression of three-dimensional things for the goal, some other painters to another purpose to paint, the Song and Yuan, the literati era began to rise, the Northern Song Su Shi proposed to calligraphy fusion in the painting, and he and many great literati began the literati painting trend [5], Su Shi, Mi Fu, as a representative, and gradually identified the Chinese painting advocate the aesthetic of the bland and harmonious way. And it was at this time that many painters began to focus their paintings on how to express the inner spirit of an object rather than its material appearance, paying more attention to the transformation and change of the brush and ink itself. For example, Mi Youren, the eldest son of Mi Fu and a great painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, developed Mi Fu's techniques and created his own style. His heirloom masterpiece "Cloudy Mountain Picture", not in his painting of the mountain like a mountain, tree like a tree, but in his localization, details, ink and ink horizontal point, even point into a piece, although sketchy, but without losing the naivety, so he titled his painting as "ink play" [1].

1368 to 1895

Beginning in the 13th century, Ming Dynasty paintings, which were more colorful than those of the Song Dynasty, appeared. The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Biography, which contains the essence of many master painters and became an introductory textbook for Chinese painting thereafter, first appeared in 1679[6]. In terms of schools of painting, on the one hand, there was the Wu Men School of painting, which still retained the characteristics of the literati paintings of the Yuan Dynasty and was led by Shen Zhou [2008-10-07]. On the other hand, there was the Zhejiang School, headed by Dai Jin, which sought to revitalize and transform Song Dynasty paintings. In the early Qing Dynasty, individualistic painters began to emerge, departing from the tradition of conformity painting in favor of a freer painting style. In the 17th and 18th centuries, large commercial cities such as Yangzhou and Shanghai became centers of art as merchants financed painters' innovations. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Chinese painters were exposed to more Western painting, with some abandoning Chinese painting altogether in favor of Western painting, while others sought to blend the two, most notably Qi Baishi, who came from a peasant family.

Modernity

Since the New Culture Movement, Chinese painters have been experimenting with Western painting methods, and oil painting was introduced to China at this time. In the early years of the People's Republic of China, painters were encouraged to engage in socialist realism. Some of the Soviet Socialist Realism was introduced in its entirety, unaltered, and at that time painters were provided with subject matter and asked to produce large quantities. This restriction was relaxed in 1953 and traditional Chinese painting was reborn during the Hundred Flowers Movement of 1956-57. During this period there was a huge increase in the number of peasant art paintings showing daily life in the countryside. During the Cultural Revolution, art academies were closed, art journals and major art exhibitions were stopped, and Chinese art was severely damaged by the campaign to destroy the Four Olds. After the Cultural Revolution, art academies and professional organizations were re-established, exchanges with foreign art groups were set up, and Chinese artists experimented with new themes and techniques.