Page 51 - Chinese pottery and porcelain : an account of the potter's art in China from primitive times to the present day

The Han Dynasty, 206 b.c. to 220 a.d. 7

—first time we hear of names of artists under the Han six painters

under the Western Han, and nine under the Eastern Han; also

of workers in bronze and other craftsmen.^ The typical, traditional

objects of antiquity now received a tinge of personality, or even

gave way to new forms ; these dissolved into numerous variations,

to express correspondingly numerous shades of sentiment and

to answer the demands of customers of various minds."

Religion has always exerted a powerful influence on art, especi-

ally among primitive peoples, and the religions of China at the

beginning of the Han dynasty were headed by two great schools

—of thought Confucianism and Taoism. These had absorbed and,

to a great extent, already superseded the elements of primitive

nature worship, which never entirely disappear. Confucianism, how-

ever, being rather a philosophy than a religion, and discouraging

belief in the mystic and supernatural, had comparatively little

influence on art. Taoism, on the other hand, with its worship of

Longevity and its constant questing for the secrets of Immortality,

supplied a host of legends and myths, spirits and demons, sages

and fairies which provided endless motives for poetry, painting

Wuand the decorative arts. The Han emperor Ti was a Taoist

adept, and the story of the visit which he received from Hsi Wang

Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, and of the expeditions which he

sent to find Mount P'eng Lai, one of the sea-girt hills of the Immortals,

have furnished numerous themes for artists and craftsmen.

It is not yet easy for people in this country to study the monu-

ments of Han art, but facilities are increasing, and a good impres-
sion of one phase at least may be obtained from reproductions

of the stone carvings in Shantung, executed about the middle of

the Han dynasty, which have been published from rubbings by
Professor E. Chavannes.'- On these monuments historical and

mythological subjects are portrayed in a curious mixture of

imagination and realism.

But these general considerations are leading us rather far afield,

and it remains to see how much or how little of them is reflected

in the pottery of the time.

As far as our present knowledge of the subject permits us to

1 Occasionally of potters.

2 La Sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties Han, Paris, 1893.

A few of these are figured by Bushell in Chinese Art, vol. i. See also Chavannes, Mission

archeologique dans la Chine septentrionale, Paris, 1909.