Page 180 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

on, the literati will leave this kind of painting to the academicians
and professionals.
TUNG YUAN AND These painters were all men of North China, nurtured in a hard,
CHU-JAN bleak countryside whose mood is well conveyed in the austerity
of their style. The painters of the south lived in a kinder environ-
ment. The hills of the lower Yangtse Valley are softer in outline,
the sunlight is diffused by mist, and winter's grip is less hard. In the
works of Tung Yuan and Chii-jan, both active in Nanking in the
middle decades of the tenth century, there is a roundness of coun-
tour and a looseness and freedom in the brushwork that arc in
marked contrast to the angular rocks and crabbed branches of Li
Ch'cng and Fan K'uan. Shcn Kua said that Tung Yuan "was
skilled in painting the mists of autumn and far open views" and
that "his pictures were meant to be seen at a distance, because their
brushwork was very rough." Tung also, rather surprisingly,
worked in a coloured style like that of Li Ssu-hsiin. The revolu-
tionary impressionism which Tung Yuan and his pupil Chii-jan
achieved by means of broken ink-washes and the elimination of
the outline is well illustrated by Tung Yiian's scroll depicting sce-
nery along the Hsiao and Hsiang rivers in Hunan, sections of
which arc now in the museums in Peking and Shanghai. In this
evocation of the atmosphere of a summer evening, the contours
of the hills arc soft and rounded and the mist is beginning to form
among the trees, while here and there the diminutive figures of
191 Attributed 10 Tung Yuan (tenth fishermen and travellers go about their business. Over the scene
century) Sintcry along thr Hnaa mJ
Hsiang Riven. Detail ui a handscroll. Ink hangs a peace so profound that we can almost hear their voices as
and colour on silk. Early Sung
they call to each other across the water. Here for the first time an
Dynasty(?).
element of pure lyricism appears in Chinese landscape painting.
M

THE PAINTING OF Vestiges of Northern Sung realism lingered on in the Southern
THE LITERATI Sung Academy, and in professional painting even through the
Ming and Ch'ing dynasties—as, for example, in the landscape by
Yuan Chiang illustrated on page 229—but this apparent realism
was a mere convention: the artist was no longer looking at nature
with fresh eyes, he was simply concocting pictures out of his
head. But even while a realism based on genuine observation was