Page 149 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

I $0 Yen Li-pen (died 67 J ) Emperor
:
I Isiian ofthe Ch'en Dynasty. Detail of a
handscrull of thirteen emperors from
Han to SuL Ink and colour on silk.
Tang Dynasty.

tsung and Wu Tsc-t'icn sleeps, unviolated, in the depths of a hill of
rock not far away, and until at some future date it is opened, we can
only imagine the treasures of art and craft it must contain.
The quality of T'ang court life is further revealed in the paint-
ings attributed to Chou Fang and to Chang Hsuan, a court painter
under Ming Huang who was chiefly celebrated for his paintings of
"young nobles, saddle horses, and women of rank." So far as is
known, none of their works survives in the original, but there ex-
ists what is possibly a careful copy of a T'ang painting by one or
the other of these masters, Court Ladies Preparing Silk, attributed
to the Sung emperor Hui-tsung, but more likely a product of his
palace studio: it is hard to imagine the emperor having the time to
make replicas of this sort, although he often put his name to them.
We sec a lady, about to pound the silk strands, rolling up her
sleeves; another draws out the thread, a third is sewing, on the left
a servant fans the charcoal brazier. The colour is rich and glowing, fir
the detail of jewel-like precision. There is neither ground nor
uniquely Chinese sense of almost tangible space between the ISP
background, but the picture has depth, and there is a subtle and
figures.
Court painters such as Chou Fang and Chang Hsuan were kept
busy by the emperor, as were the poets, in celebrating the more
memorable social and cultural events of court life, and in portrait 1
painting. This included portraits not only of the emperor's fa-
vourite concubines and virtuous ministers, but also of strangers
from the West whose exaggerated features have been a never-fail- 160 Female attendants. Detail of a wall
ing source of delight to the Chinese. In more serious vein were painting in the tomb of Fnncess Yung-
t'ai. Ch'ien-hsien, Shrnn T'ang
portraits of Buddhist priests, such as the series of the patriarchs of Dynasty, about 706.
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aterial