Landscape Painting of China and Japan. Hugo Münsterberg
was as nothing. In a critic like Hsieh Ho, the dual nature of the Chinese mind is clearly revealed, and, as in Confucius and Lao-tzu, the rational and the emotional, the practical and the mystic both find expression. Thus Hsieh Ho in his six canons lists five which are basically technical. The second principle is the "bone manner," or structural use of the brush, while in the third he tells the artist to conform with the objects to obtain their likeness. The fourth says that the colors should be applied according to the species; the fifth deals with composition, which Siren has translated as "plan and design, place and position"; and the sixth says to transmit models by drawing.14 However, he begins with the first and most important, the ch'i-yün shêng-tung, which is as elusive and profound as the writings of Lao-tzu. Yet both are essential to Chinese art, and they must exist side by side, for in any really great work technique and inspiration are inseparably united. In the last analysis, even the greatest inspiration is worthless if the artist does not have the skill to give expression to it, and on the other hand, even the greatest technical ability is of little value when the artist lacks inspiration.
A unique feature of Chinese painting which distinguishes it from that of the West is its close relationship to calligraphy, a relationship that has certainly existed since Han times, that is, for at least two thousand years. The great artists of China were often as highly esteemed as calligraphers as they were as painters, and the skillful and artistic use of the brush played an essential role in the training of every person of education. Another difference between China and the West is that the Chinese artists were, more likely than not, gentlemen-painters rather than professionals, many being officials, statesmen, or even generals and emperors. This cultural ideal of the gentleman-painter, who is an amateur in the best sense of the word, is aptly described in the introduction to the catalogue of the collection of the most famous of all the gentlemen-painters, the Emperor Hui Tsung of the Sung dynasty, an artist of considerable talent who assembled one of the most magnificent collections of Chinese painting ever known. In the catalogue he says that the famous landscape painters from the T'ang to the Sung period were by and large not professionals but high officials and scholars who carried their vision of hills and valleys in their hearts, were in love with springs and stones, and had a great weakness for mists and clouds. He ends by saying that landscape paintings cannot be sold in the street, for they do not correspond to the taste of the common people.15
2
The Beginnings of Chinese Landscape Painting
THE earliest landscapes in Chinese art are found in the Han period (202 B.C.—220 A.D.) some two thousand years ago. At that time mountains, clouds, trees, and buildings first appeared in relief carvings, textile designs, mirror backs, and inlaid metal objects, but the elements of nature were rendered in a highly symbolic and abstract way. Although similar forms must also have appeared in the paintings of the period, no examples of such works have survived, and our knowledge, at best, is fragmentary. However, the evidence clearly suggests that nothing but the most stylized and primitive kind of landscape setting appeared in these early examples of landscape painting. The main elements were no doubt highly simplified, with very geometric trees and mountains rendered so abstractly that they would hardly have been recognizable. The reason for this was not so much a lack of skill on the part of the artists, since Han painters were in many ways highly competent, even sophisticated craftsmen; it was rather that they concentrated more on figure painting, devoting their major effort to the portrayal of scenes from myths, legends, history, and filial piety, and hence were little interested in landscape painting as such.
It was not until the following era, the Six Dynasties period (265—589), that landscape painting as such began. This development, according to Chinese tradition, is associated with one of the most celebrated of all Chinese artists, the great painter, calligrapher, and wit Ku K'ai-chih, who worked during the second half of the fourth century in the Southern capital at Nanking. Although he too regarded figure painting and portraiture as the most significant class of painting, he was nevertheless the first to accord landscape its proper place. A description of a real or imaginary landscape painted by Ku K'ai-chih has been preserved in an essay entitled Hua Yün-t'ai Shan Chi, or "How to Paint the Cloud-Terrace Mountain."16 How far this still was from naturalism is best seen by the fact that it was a Taoist landscape with peach trees of long life. In painting it, the artist said that he would make "purple rocks looking something like solid clouds, five or six of them astride the hill. And ascending between them there should be shapes that writhe and coil like dragons."17 Certainly the kind of landscape suggested in the essay must have been primitive in the extreme. The famous T'ang critic Chang Yen-yuan, writing in 847, five hundred years later, when presumably the originals by Ku K'ai-chih were still extant, says:
There are some famous pictures handed down from the Wei and Chin dynasties, and I have had occasion to see them. The landscapes are filled with crowded peaks, their effect is like that of filigree ornaments or horn combs. Sometimes the water does not seem to flow, sometimes the figures are larger than the mountains. The views are generally enclosed by trees and stones which stand in a circle on the ground. They look like rows of lifted arms with outspread fingers.18
No originals by Ku K'ai-chih have been preserved, but fortunately two excellent copies have survived. The first is the famous "Admonitions of the Imperial Preceptress" scroll, formerly in the imperial collection in Peking and now in the British Museum in London, which is believed to be a T'ang copy of a famous Ku K'ai-chih painting. One of the scenes shows a huntsman with a bow kneeling at the foot of a mountain and aiming at some birds in the distance.19 The relation between the figures and the mountain, both in relative size and in space, is wholly unnaturalistic, although the mountain itself, with its rising peaks, deep valleys, and dropping cliffs, is rendered very convincingly.
Another copy after Ku K'ai-chih, which is far better preserved and, although of later date, closer in style to what an original of the fourth century must have looked like, is in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington. It comes from the Sung period, probably the twelfth century, and represents the tale of the nymph of the Lo River (Plate 1). A continuous scroll in which figures are seen in a landscape, the painting illustrates very clearly the primitive kind of landscape typical of the period. In the detail shown, the figures are too large in relation to the landscape which, as in the work of Italian Primitives like Giotto, is little more than a setting for human activity. The mountains in the left foreground are so stylized that at first glance one hardly recognizes them, and the trees, climbing up the slopes and standing in front, have no consistent relationship in size, either among themselves or to the mountains. One tree soars high above the tallest peak; another, a willow, is the same size as the mountains; and the rest are as small as a single branch of the largest tree. In the middle foreground the trees are much shorter than those standing above in back, and the ship at the right is too small in relation to the figures. Each part—the mountains, the figures, the ship—is almost a unit in itself, and neither in space nor in perspective has the painter succeeded in fusing the parts into a whole. The treatment of the landscape is still highly decorative and corresponds very closely to Chang Yen-yüan's description. It is clear that Ku K'ai-chih has attempted to show figures in a natural setting, relating them to the space and to the scenery, but it is equally clear that his ability to render the setting convincingly is still inadequate, and the result, though charming in an archaic sort of way, is not successful as a landscape.
A somewhat younger contemporary of Ku K'ai-chih who lived on into the fifth century was Tsung Ping (375—443), of whom unfortunately no paintings have been preserved. We are told, however, that he was famous for his landscape paintings and that he roamed about the mountain wilderness, playing his lute and enjoying the beauty and grandeur of nature. When he grew old he painted some of his favorite scenes on the walls of his house and lamented the fact that he could no longer wander in the mountains. He wrote a brief essay entitled Shan Shut Sü, or "Introduction to Landscape Painting," which shows a sentiment closely allied to that of the great landscape painters of later periods and is clearly Taoist in inspiration. In it he says:
Landscapes exist in material substance and soar into the realm of the spirit.... Taoists travelled among the mountains.... Such sojourning has often been called finding pleasure in mountains and water by