Page 396 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

136 CHINESE ART.
Chao Meng-fu belonged to an artistic family. A younger
brother, two sons, and two grandsons are enrolled with him in the
list of painters ; and also his wife, the Lady Kuan, who was herself
ennobled by the emperor. She was a clever painter of flowers and
her rapid ink sketches of peonies, prunus-flowers and orchids were
admirable ; it is related that she would watch the moving shadows
of the sprays thrown by the moon on the paper windows, and
transfer the fugitive outHnes to paper with a few strokes of her
supple brush, so that every smallest scrap of her work was mounted
in albums as a model for others to copy. One of the sons, Chao Yung,
whose literary title was Chung-mu, and who rose to be governor of
Ch'ao-chou, is said in the encyclopaedia
" to have painted landscapes in the style of Tung Yuan, a noted land-
scape painter ot the After T'ang dynasty (loth century), and to have been
good at men and horses, mountains and flowers."
The picture reproduced in Fig. 128 is attributed to Chao Yung by
Chinese connoisseurs, being labelled at the back Chao Chitng-mit Hsi
Hsia Wei Lieh T'ou, " Picture of a Tangut Hunter by Chao Chung-
mu," and its authenticity is generally accepted, although seals
and signatures have been trimmed away by careless mounters. It
is interesting to have a contemporary picture of a horseman, whose
fellows were overrunning Russia and Hungary at the time and
had even thundered, according to Gibbon, at the gates of Vienna.
The pacing black pony marked with a white star on the forehead
and with four symmetrically white feet, with its small alert head,
long lithe body and knotted tail, is a fair representative of the
hardy twelve-hand Mongolian race ; while the fur-clad rider,
with his small fur-trimmed bonnet crowned with a plume of fal-
con's feathers, and his large earrings, might be met on the northern
marches of Tibet to-day. He sits high in the saddle, pressing the
sides of the horse with stirruped feet in leather boots, and the
reins tightly grasped in his two hands are hung with the feet of the
quarry, to suggest the return from a hunt after deer ; he carries