Page 384 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

128 CHINESE ART.
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hall of an old temple at Nanking a figure of Locana Buddha in
company with Confucius and the ten sages of the Confucian school-
The emperor, astonished, asked him why he had painted Confucius
and the sages inside the gates of a Buddhist monastery ; he replied
" They will be of service later." Four centuries afterwards, when
the Later Chou djmasty proscribed Buddhism and destroyed
every monastery and pagoda in the kingdom, this was the only
temple spared on account of its Confucian frescoes. A celebrated
picture entitled " A Party of Drunken Monks " proves that the
artist was not blind to the foibles of the reUgieux of the time.
Fable-mongers tell many legends of his wondrous skill in the
delineation of dragons. It was his practice to leave the monsters
incomplete by not touching in the eyes, and once, the story says,
when dared by the incredulous to dot in the pupils of the eyes of a
pair of dragons on a fresco, the walls were rent and the creations of
the pencil, "becoming instinct with life, soared into the clouds with
peals of thunder and lightning.
Yuan Ti, a later emperor of the Liang dynasty, who reigned
A.D. 552-554, was himself an artist. When Governor of Ching-
chou, before he came to the throne, he painted the " Pictures of
the tribute bearers " {Chih kung t'ou), in which over thirty foreign
nations were represented in succession ; the first mention of a
subject which has occupied many painters in China since his time.
To return to the Emperor K'ang-Hsi's list of names. The Sui
dynasty (581-618), under which the empire was re-united, with the
capital at Ch'ang-an, the modern Si-an-fu, in the north-west, is
distinguished by four artists. Two of the four, Tung Po-jen and
Chan Tzu-ch'ien, who came together to the new capital of Ch'ang-an,
one from Hopei, the other from Chiangnan, were forthwith given
appointments at court, and founded a new school, which was
destined to produce its highest achievements in the next dynasty-
So they are generally known as the progenitors of T'ang Painting.
The former artist painted hunting scenes and pictures of country life,