Page 249 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

277 Giuseppe Castiglionc, A Hundred
Honrs in a Landstapt. Detail of a
horses in a landscape or scenes of court life signed, very carefully, hindscroll Ink and colour on silk.
with his Chinese name, Lang Shih-ning, were greatly admired. Ch'ing Dynasty.
He had numerous pupils and imitators, for the decorative realism
of his style was particularly suited to the kind of "furniture paint-
ing" the palace required in such quantities to decorate its endless
apartments. Castiglionc, however, no more affected the general
trend of Chinese painting in his time than did the Chinese artists
working for the Europeans in Canton and Hongkong. Tsou I-kuei
(1686-1772), a court artist to Ch'ien-lung noted for the painstak-
ing realism of his flower paintings (an art in which he probably in-
fluenced the style of his colleague Castiglionc), much admired
Western perspective and shading. "If they paint a palace or a man-
sion on a wall," he wrote, "one would almost feel induced to enter
it." But he makes it clear that these are mere technicalities, to be
kept in their proper place. "The student should learn something
of their achievements so as to improve his own method. But their
technique of strokes is negligible. Even if they attain perfection it
is merely craftsmanship. Thus, foreign painting cannot be called
3
art.
The most interesting and neglected of the Ch'ing professional
painters, however, was the group around Li Yin and Yuan
Chiang, both of whom were working in prosperous Yangchow
between about 1690 and 1725, after which the latter, like his son(?)
Yuan Yao, became a court painter. They arc chiefly noted for hav-
ing given a violent twist to the long-moribund Northern tradition
by applying to the style and composition of early Sung masters
such as Kuo Hsi the fantastic distortions of the late Ming expres-
sionists. The blend of fantasy and mannerism in their work can be 278 Yuan Chiang (early eighteenth
century). Ctntlemen Converting in a
seen in the meticulously painted landscape by Yuan Chiang illus-
Landuape. Hanging scroll. Ink and
trated here. colour on silk. Ch'ing Dynasty.
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Cop