Page 411 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

PICTORIAL ART. 143

qualities of the first order : force and neatness of conception, clear
definition of forms, sobriety of composition and just sentiment
of decorative effect, rare knowledge of design, decision, and
suppleness in the stroke of the brush, fine taste in the selection of
vivid clear colours and also in their harmonious combination. It
is the style of a healthy and fertile art at the beginning of the dynasty
although destined to become "deja froid et bientot sterile " before
the close.
Lin Liang, a native of Kuangtung, who flourished in the middle
of the fifteenth century, was noted for his pictures of birds and
flowers. He is said to have been a very rapid worker, making free
consecutive strokes with his brush, which he seldom raised from
the paper. The picture of wild geese and rushes * in Fig. 130 is a
good specimen of his work. It is a fine example of the ink-sketch,
so much practised by the Sung painters and continued by the earlier
masters of the Ming dynasty, among whom Lin Liang stands in
the first rank ; according to Mr. Fenollosa, he is the greatest of al
the Ming artists.
Ch'iu Ying is perhaps the most highly appreciated of the Ming
artists by Chinese critics, and his pictures are often copied in the
present day. He excels in figure subjects and in the art of com-
position of varied and lifelike groups in picturesque surroundings,
which he is said to have acquired by industrious study of older
masters, so as to select and copy the best points of each for his own
purposes and combinations. His masterpiece was the " Shang Lin
Park " of the emperor Wu Ti, a vast pleasaunce which was thrown
open in the year b.c. 138 for a concourse of nobles and scholars from
all parts of the empire. A companion picture of the above, known
as " Han Kung Ch'un," i.e., " Springtime in the Palace of the Han,"
is now in the British Museum, a little piece of which is illustrated
in Fig. 131, a party of musicians tuning their instruments and
* This picture is one of a pair in the British Museum. The companion
roll is illustrated in Giles' Chinese Pictorial Art, I.e. (p. 154).