Page 375 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

PICTORIAL ART. I2i

Ch'uan, the ruler of the principality of Wu. He was famous for
his delineations of dragons and of wild and domestic animals,
as well as for figure scenes, and many legends are extant of his
marvellous skill. Commissioned to paint a screen he accidentally
made a blot and turned it into a fly so cleverly that the emperor,
when he saw it, tried to flip it off with his sleeve. Another myth
relates circumstantially that in the tenth month in winter in the
year a.d. 23S a red dragon was seen to swoop down from heaven
and swim about in the lake, so that the artist was able to outline
its form, and the emperor wrote an appreciative inscription on
the picture ; and that two centuries later, after a prolonged drought
and many unavailing prayers, when the picture was at last brought
out and unrolled over the water, clouds immediately gathered
in the sky, followed by an abundant fall of rain, as though evoked
by a living dragon.
The material generally used at this time for water-colour pictures
was silk. Ku K'ai-chih, to be noticed presently, describes in a treatise
on painting, written in the fourth century, the care he always took in
selecting a close, evenly woven texture that would not warp, 2y|y feet
in breadth, for his own use. When finished the picture was pasted on
thick paper, with borders of brocade, mounted at the ends with rollers
of wood tipped with metal, and when rolled up it was tied round
with silk cords fastened with tags of jade or ivory. The usual
form was the chi'ian, or volmnen, the Japanese niakimono, ranging
m length from a foot or so to forty or more feet, the length of a
full piece of silk. It was laid horizontally on the table to be painted
with one or several scenes, spaces being left at the ends for seals,
inscriptions, and critical appreciations. A second form was the
hanging scroll, the Japanese kakemono, generally of shorter length,
and painted vertically.
Bamboo was perhaps the earliest material used for painting and
writing in China, cut into lengths of about a foot or a little more
and split longitudinally into tablets of convenient size. It was
8941. 2 T