Page 407 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

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PICTORIAL ART. 141

cabinet. According lo Professor Giles, he rose to be Censor in 709
and was afterwards President of the Board of Rites till 713, when
he committed suicide, undone by political intrigue. He was noted
throughout the empire as a calligraphist, and as an inspired artist of
the highest class, excelling in his pictures of cranes. The Man-
churian crane (Grus viridirostris), with its plumage of black and
white and a characteristic bare crimson patch upon its forehead
and crown, is a bird of good augury and an emblem of longevity,
the aerial steed of Wang Tza-ch'iao, whom it carries to the celestial
realm of the immortals. Some fifty years after the artist's death,
Tu Fu, the eminent poet, gazing upon a fresco of a crane by Hsieh
Chi, broke into an impromptu, of which two lines run,
The wall, and bird so deftly limned.
Seem flying, every hue undimmed.
9. Mo Chu, literally " Ink bamboos," Book 20.—The bamboo
growing in graceful clumps with delicate mobile sprays waving in the
breeze is the ideal of the Chinese artist in black and white. Some
of them are said to have spent their whole lives in trying to outline
the subtle movements of the leaves on paper and to have died at
last unsatisfied with the result of their loving labour. The rhythmic
spirit of movement underlying the actual reality of things has always
been the goal of the highest art.
10. Sm Ktw, " Legumes and Fruit," remainder of Book 20.
Herbs and insects {(s'ao chuiig) is the most usual title of pictures
in this category, the praying mantis, gigantic grasshoppers, and
coloured beetles being favourite types. The pictures are often
intended to illustrate the classical Book of Odes called Shih Ching,
which draws so many of its similes dii"ectly from nature. A special
place is kept at the end with the heading phi ts'ao for illustrators
of the official materia medica, which dates back to the third century
of our era, if not earlier.
This rough sketch of the field of Chinese pictorial art up to the
twelfth century of our era might be filled in from the records, but
8941. 3 B