Yangzhou, which faces Suzhou across the Yangtze River, was home to the “Eight Eccentrics” – the eight painters all with strong characters, proud and aloof, who refused to follow orthodoxy. They used freehand brushwork and broadened the horizon of flower-and-bird painting.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Shanghai, which gave birth to the Shanghai Painting School, had become the most prosperous commercial city and a gathering place for numerous painters. Following the spirit of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, the Shanghai School played a vital role in the transition of Chinese traditional painting from a classical art form to a modern one.
The May 4th Movement of 1919, or the New Culture Movement, inspired the Chinese to learn from western art and introduce it to China. Many outstanding painters, led by Xu Beihong, emerged, whose paintings recognized a perfect merging of the merits of both Chinese and Western styles, absorbing western classicism, romanticism and impressionism. Other great painters of this period include Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong and Zhang Daqian.
Oil painting, a western art, was introduced to China in the 17th century and gained popularity in the early 20th century. In the 1980s Chinese oil painting boomed.
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New Year Painting |
Then came popular folk painting — Chinese New Year pictures pinned up on doors, room walls and windows on the Chinese New Year to invite heavenly blessings and ward off disasters and evil spirits – which dates back to the Qin and Han dynasties. Thanks to the invention of block printing, folk painting became popular in the Song Dynasty and reached its zenith of sophistication in the Qing. Woodcuts have become increasingly diverse in style, variety, theme and artistic form since the early 1980s.
Classification of Chinese Traditional Painting
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Four treasures of the study |
Traditional Chinese painting has its special materials and tools, consisting of brushes, ink and pigments, xuan paper, silk and various kinds of ink slabs. Based on different classification standards, Chinese traditional painting can be divided into several groups, as follows:
1. Techniques
According to painting techniques, Chinese painting can be divided into two styles: xieyi style and gongbi style. Xieyi, or freehand, is marked by exaggerated forms and freehand brushwork. Gongbi, or meticulous, is characterized by close attention to detail and fine brushwork. Freehand painting generalizes shapes and displays rich brushwork and ink techniques.
2. Forms
The principal forms of traditional Chinese painting are the hanging scroll, album of paintings, fan surface and long horizontal scroll. Hanging scrolls are both horizontal and vertical, usually mounted and hung on the wall. In an album of paintings the artist paints on a certain size of xuan paper and then binds a number of paintings into an album, which is convenient for storage. Folding fans and round fans made of bamboo strips with painted paper or silk pasted on the frame. The long, horizontal scroll is also called a hand scroll and is usually less than 50 centimeters high but maybe up to 100 meters long.
3. Subjects
Traditional Chinese paintings can be classified as figure paintings, landscapes and flower-and-bird paintings. Landscapes represent a major category in traditional Chinese painting, mainly depicting the natural scenery of mountains and rivers.
The range of subject matter in figure painting was extended far beyond religious themes during the Song Dynasty (960-1127). Landscape painting had already established itself as an independent form of expression by the fourth century and gradually branched out into the two separate styles: blue-and-green landscapes using bright blue, green and red pigments; and ink-and-wash landscapes relied on vivid brushwork and inks. Flower-and-bird painting deviated from decorative art to form its own independent genre around the ninth century.
Traditional Chinese painting, poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal engraving are necessary components that supplement and enrich one another. “Painting in poetry and poetry in painting” has been a criterion for excellent works. Inscriptions and seal impressions help explain the painter’s ideas and sentiments and also add beauty to the painting.
（Source: chinaculture.org）
