Page 255 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

his brush. While wc may not be able to analyse Shih-t'ao's thought
with any precision, in reading the Hua yii lu we become aware of
what the art, and the act, of painting could mean to the inspired
practitioner.
In his own painting, Shih-t'ao justifies his claim in the Hua yii lu
that by establishing the one-line method he has created a method
out of an absence of method. His concept of the ecstatic union of
the artist with nature is by no means new, but nowhere in the
whole of later Chinese art will we find it expressed with so much
spontaneous charm. Whether in a handscroll such as the delightful
illustration to T'ao Yiian-ming's The Peach Blossom Spring, or in a
towering landscape such as the magnificent view of Mount Lu in
the Sumitomo Collection, or in any of his album-leaves, his
forms and colours are ever fresh, his spirit light, his inventiveness
and wit inexhaustible.
All these masters, although they drew upon the tradition, de-
veloped and enriched it and so touched the heights. At a rather
lower level we encounter a host of painters who represent the or-
thodox stream, flowing down from Shen Chou, Wen Cheng-
ming, and Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, that survived the upheaval and kept
its steady, if seldom adventurous, course, growing ever broader

235