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| Created in China > Art Treasures > Chinese Crafts and Fine Arts > Chinese Painting |
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Ancient Painting Traditional Chinese Painting
Ancient Chinese paintings can be traced back to as early as 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, when people began to use minerals to draw simple pictures resembling animals, plants, and even human beings on rocks and produce drawings of amazing designs and decorations on the surface of potteries and later bronze containers. However, only a few of the works have survived over time. The earliest drawings that have been preserved till today were produced on paper and silk, which were burial articles with a history of over 2,000 years.
In 1949 a painting on white silk was unearthed in a tomb of the Chu Kingdom near Changsha in Hunan Province . This Human, Dragon and Phoenix Painting is the earliest traditional Chinese painting found so far. The painting was executed about 2,300 years ago on a piece of white silk used as a banner in traditional Chinese funerals.
Chinese painting came a long way during the 300-year period that saw the rise and fall of the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280), the Jin Dynasty (265-420) and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-581). Although there was the chaos of wars and many dynastic changes during this period, active intellectual life of different schools provided a great impetus to artistic development.Gu Kaizhi, known as the founder of traditional Chinese painting, and his scroll paintings, represented the painting style of the period.
The painting demonstrates Wu Daozi's basic painting style. Unlike his predecessors, Gu Kaizhi and Lu Tanhui, whose stroke lines were slender and forceful but lacked variety, Wu's strokes were full of changes and vigor, expressing the internal world of the characters. Wu used simple colors or none at all. He was always in great ferment when he was painting, and his works exhibit an expressionist style.
Portrait painting boomed in the Tang Dynasty. There were two important portrait painters in the mid-Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xuan and Zhou Fang. They were good at portraying court ladies. Their works symbolized a change in portraiture and were of special importance in Chinese painting history.
Imperial painting academies were first established in the Five Dynasties. They were under the direct administration of the imperial government.The Song Dynasty united China again in 960 and expanded the imperial painting academy. It became the creative center of painting of the time.
Qingming Festival by the Riverside is a long colored painted scroll portraying the noisy street scenes of Bianjing during the Qingming Festival (a festival for the mourning of ancestors).The painting has complicated scenes with rigorous structures. It is a great and rare realistic painting and provides vivid visual information about business, handicrafts, architecture and transportation tools in the big metropolis of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Like the flowers and bird paintings and figure paintings of the period, the mountains and water paintings of the Song Dynasty were very realistic. The Yuan Dynasty painters later developed landscape painting from this basis.Four Great Painters were the most famous artists of the time.
With the demise of the Yuan Dynasty, Suzhou became a gathering place for Chinese intellectuals. These included many well-known painters.According to historical records, some 150 painters, about one-fifth of all the Ming Dynasty painters, were in Suzhou, and they formed an influential school of painting. Historically Suzhou was also known as Wumen, and this painting school was named the Wumen Painting School.
The eight painters' paintings did not follow the old brushstroke conventions, making them look strange compared with other paintings of the time. In addition, these painters were proud and uncontrolled and had bold personalities; thus they were named the Eight Eccentric Painters.
Xu went to Europe to study Western classical realist painting, and then combined it with traditional Chinese painting methods. He was the pioneer of contemporary Chinese realist fine arts.
Qi Baishi (1864-1957) was a famous painter whose life of nearly 100 years spanned two centuries.
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Painting on the Silk
Scroll Painting
Wu Daozi of Tang Dynasty
Skillful Court Lady Painters
The Imperial Painting Academy
Qingming Festival by the Riverside
The Four Great Painters of the Yuan Dynasty
The Wumen Painting School
Eight Eccentric Painters of Yangzhou
Xu Beihong
Qi Baishi |