Oil painting Art blog by Lucas Art

The Han dynasty began to employ royal painters to serve in the imperial court. They were not allowed to paint outside the palaces. The Emperors also built special pavilions to store the royal collections of paintings which mainly illustrated the contribution and achievement emperors had made during their reigns. All the dynasties ever since had kept this tradition until the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty. One of the important tasks for the royal painters was to draw portraits of many wives and court ladies so the emperor couuld use those portraits to select which one to accompany him for the night. As consequences, many court ladies would bribe royal painters to paint a portrait looked more beautiful than they actually were. There was a famous fable of the Han dynasty which told the story of royal painter Mao Yanshou. When he was severing at the Han court, he met one of the most beautiful women in Chinese history, Wang Zhaojun. She did not bribe Mao and so the emperor never asked her accompany during her entire stay at the court. Even worse the emperor gave her away to marry the king of Xiongnu when he came to the Han capital to seek peace with the empire. When the emperor finally saw her just before her departure to Xiongnu, he found Wang Zhaojun was the most beautiful woman he ever saw. The emperor was very furious and investigated why he did not call her accompany. He found her portrait. One legend said Mao Yanshou was executed by the emperor.

This incident illustrates that painters in the Han Dynasty were still very low in their social statuS and painting was only a mean to earn a living. Even royal painters were still a slave in the imperial court and their destiny was in the control of their master, the emperor.

After the fall of the Han Dynasty and the rise of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, many social changes started during this period. Two of the most significant were the arrival of Buddhism and foreign cultures, and the emergence of an active intellectual class. During the Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties China divided small states, and political upheavals across the country. However Buddhism prospered tremendously during this period and reached an unprecedented level of acceptance. Because of the wide spread of Buddhism, many caves of religion importance were carved and temples were built. Their creation required many painters to decorate them with murals. Consequently painting technique was developed very rapidly. At the same time, social upheavals brought the dissolution of the intellectuals. They sought refuges in Buddhism and seclusion metaphysics to escape the social and political reality. This was a period when many famous scholars established their places in the culture history of China.