Oil painting Art blog by Lucas Art

Northern Painters and Southern Painters .
In his book Famous Paintings Record of Past Dynasties, Zhang Yanyuan wrote, shanshui (Chinese landscape painting) was initiated by Wu Daozi and matured with Li Sixun (651 t0 718 AD) and his son Li Zhaodao (birth and death years unknown). None of Wu’s original paintings have survived, but several major original works of two Lis have endured the history of thousand years and are still available for us to enjoy. Li Sixun’s Sailing Boats and Pavilions (Jiangfan Louge Tu) features tourists strolling by riverside, azure skies, boats on the misty river and exquisite buildings at the foot of hills, scenes that symbolize vastness and tranquility. The tree trunks, twigs and leaf veins are painted by using the “double outline technique.” The rocks are outlined in vigorous strokes using the center portion of brush without obvious radiating faint inks on both sides of strokes. It is a technique of Zhan Ziqian, a Sui Dynasty painter. But the trees and rocks are drawn in great detail as if they were copies of nature. Main colors used are blue and green, but the turning points of ink lines are decorated with shining gold, a sharp contrast to its overall color tone. The painting embodies the lucidity and colorfulness exhibited in Zhan’s Spring Out (You Chun Tu). Li Zhaodao further improved his father’s style and reached a new level of sophistication. His Traveling in the Spring Mountain (Chunshan Xinglv Tu) and Emperor Xuanzong’s Journey to Sichuan (Minghuang Xing Shu Tu) are both painted on vertical silk scrolls with light colors. The paintings feature changing mists, remote valleys, rushing waterfalls, lush forests and leisurely tourists on horsebacks. Despite the small size of the scrolls, the grand composition of magnificent scenes is all vividly depicted.

The “outline technique” means to draw the contour of the images with ink lines. Usually two strokes, either side by side or one above another, are drawn, merging in centre. Then transparent colors are used to create a shade before brilliant, nontransparent mineral colors are applied. This approach is thus known as “double outline technique.” It is a traditional painting technique. Before the Song Dynasty, employed this method in their landscape and figure paintings and paintings of flowers and birds. “Double outline” is also evident in Chinese calligraphy to imitate many important original works. After the Tang and Song dynasties, many painters devoted themselves to landscape. !. They used the main body or the side of brush to make strokes to imitate grains of rocks and veins of tree barks, an approach that is known as the “stroke technique.” To depict grains of different rocks, several painters developed a number of highly individualistic stroke techniques, such as Hemp-Fiber Strokes of Juran, Straight Rubbing Strokes of Guang Tong and Li Cheng and Raindrop Strokes of F “hemp-fiber” and “raindrop” were first used by art critics to describe the respective characteristics of different stroke types and they have since been integrated into the terminology of Chinese painting.

The transition period between the Tang Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty is called the Five Dynasties (907 to 956 AD). It was in this brief period that the status of landscape was defined. We live by nature. But for Chinese painters it also embodies the dao (the truth). The Northern School represented by Jing Hao and Guan Tong was famous for their grand composition of large mountains and broad rivers. However, the signature style of the Southern School represented by Dong Yuan and Juran is their simplistic depiction of southern China, a world of constant misty, drizzly rains and light breezes. Traditional “blue and green shanshuis” declined in popularity. Scholar painters began to emphasize the use of brush and the application of ink. Ink-and-wash landscapes, without the use of colors or with only light colors, reached its maturity. Painters also began to explore the philosophical dimension of their paintings.

During the Tang and Song Dynasties, Zen was popular in China and painters of Southern China advocated the spirit of fiat and innocence. Dong Yuan and ]uran’s paintings, though mountains were high and grand, did not have a sense of magnificence. Mi Fu praised their paintings and wrote, “their paintings have a clear and moist scent, with innocent outlines,” and “Juran’s paintings with exuberant lands are full of life and freshness. Running mountains extended into the distance and on the valleys between them dotted with farm houses with doors open and a small path in front winding its way to the depth of the valleys. Trees lined in all directions, rocks standing in the middle of rivers beating waves against, and grasses dancing in the wind. As a Buddhist monk, Juran had an apathetic attitude to life more than Dong Yuan would, and thus, Juran’s paintings had fewer and lonelier people and many deserted sceneries. His paintings made people feel more isolated from the society. The artist concerned more on the universe in his heart and mind and much less on the materialist world at large. The scholars in the generations followed admired Juran and treasured his paintings, mainly because they loved his Zen philosophy.

Painting history always associated Jing, Guan, Dong and Ju with the Five Dynasties and the early Northern Song Dynasty. They actually inherited and represented the highest level of sophistication of landscapes of both Northern and Southern China. They had a unique place in the history of landscapes. Northern China style had many followers in the North Song Dynasty and produced many masters. Because southern China style was promoted by scholars, they gained popularity in the Yuan Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, whenever discussing landscape, Dong and Ju would be mentioned and the northern China style of “panorama shanshui” was gradually forgotten.