Landscape Painting of China and Japan. Hugo Münsterberg
Wu Tao-tzu's of a single day... both are excellent in the extreme."23 Although this story must be legendary, since Li was no longer alive at the time, it nevertheless illustrates the style of painting associated with these two artists during the T'ang period, when their works were no doubt readily available to the scholars and connoisseurs. Of course wall paintings such as these would deteriorate rapidly, and today we have no idea of what they looked like.
Although Li Ssu-hsün was dead at this time, his work was being carried on by his son, Li Chao-tao (ca. 670—730), who was a painter famous in his own right. Tradition has it that his works were very similar to those of his father, except that they lacked the elder Li's creative power and strength of brush stroke. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to compare their work, but it would seem likely that the younger Li, coming at a later time, would have shown a somewhat more advanced manner of painting landscapes. His works were apparently still quite numerous during the ninth century, and even today there are at least two paintings to which Li Chao-tao's name has become attached and which, even if not by his own hand, certainly reflect his style. The first, a small colored landscape painted on silk, which is in the Peking National Museum, represents travellers in a mountain landscape (Plate 5). This may well be an eighth-century original, for the closeness of its style to that of similar scenes painted on musical instruments in the Shōsō-in in Nara is striking. The manner of painting is extremely meticulous, and the many details are executed with sharply defined linear accents. The bright colors are typical of this type of T'ang painting, which is known as ch'ing lü shan shui, since the dominant colors are always blue and green, though in this painting there are greys and red as well.
The scene represented in the detail (Plate 6) shows a mountainous landscape with steep cliffs and valleys through which a group of men on horseback are travelling, accompanied by camels with heavy burdens. Decorative, picturesquely-shaped trees are scattered through the valley, while along the ridges and peaks groups of tiny trees are set like combs. Highly stylized clouds swirl around the mountain tops, sometimes isolating them like islands and sometimes hanging above the peaks in the distance. Riders emerge from the right background and move down towards the front to a bridge leading over a stream, while in the center some travellers are resting, others are unloading the beasts of burden, and unsaddled horses are lying beneath the trees. At the left, still another group is riding up a winding path, and tiny figures appear far above on the mountain. All this is shown with a wealth of minute and beautiful detail, but the painting lacks the kind of unity and grandeur which the great landscapes of the Sung period possess. It is also interesting to note that this is by no means a pure landscape in the Sung sense, for the figures, far from being subordinate to the majesty of nature, are still the center of interest, while the mountains are to a certain extent a setting for the travellers. Although a long step has been taken from the sixth century, when the figures were still completely dominant, this is not landscape painting for its own sake but rather a transitional work where the figures and the landscape coexist as equals.
Another painting that has been traditionally associated with Li Chao-tao because of a label which was later attached to it is a landscape scroll in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Plate 7). The subject, the Ch'iu Ch'êng Palace, a summer abode of the T'ang emperors, is typical of an age characterized by splendor and material wealth. It seems unlikely that this work was actually by Li Chao-tao himself, but it may well be by a Sung artist copying one of his designs or painting in his manner. The whole problem of attribution in Chinese painting is an extremely complex one, and even the most eminent connoisseurs will differ fundamentally over questions of attribution. The reason is that, not only did the Chinese throughout their history assiduously copy the old masters, often with remarkable skill, but when doing so they also copied the signature, seals, and colophons. Likewise, they painted in the manner of an old master, not with any intention of deceiving but rather to show their veneration for the great artist in whose style they were working. Finally, in modern times, there are copies which are outright forgeries of older paintings. These, which sometimes are of very good quality, include all the proper inscriptions and seals mentioned in the literature, so that it is often difficult to detect them, especially if the original has been lost or is not readily available for comparison. The result is that dozens of works may bear the name of a celebrated artist without there being much likelihood that a single one so inscribed is actually by the artist whose seal and signature appear on the painting. And since in the Sung period critics were already lamenting the fact that most of the T'ang works they saw were later copies, it is clear that we have at best more or less accurate later versions of the works of the great T'ang masters which may or may not give us a notion of what the work of a given artist was like.
The Boston painting, at least in its subject matter and execution, is undoubtedly close to the work of both the elder and the younger Li, for we are told that they often painted the splendid palaces of the age in an elaborate, brightly colored manner. Today these colors are unfortunately faded, but even so the red, blue, green, and grey still create a vivid effect. Here again, as in the Peking landscape, the world of nature is subordinate to man's activity, and the emphasis is placed not so much upon the trees and the mountains, beautifully as they are rendered, but upon the palace itself and the people. There is a multitude of descriptive detail, of doorways, courts, stairs, tiles, all drawn with exquisite care, so that the magnificence of the palace architecture may be fully appreciated. However, the more fluent and natural rendition of the willow trees in the foreground and the simple, rather abstract treatment of the mountain tops, combined with the greater awareness of space and atmosphere, suggest that this is the work of a later date, even if the general spirit is close to that of the T'ang period.
There is another painting often attributed to Li Chao-tao, one representing a similar subject—the Lo-yang Mansion—which, like the "Mountain Landscape with Travellers," is owned by the Chinese government and used to be in the Palace Museum in Peking.24 The motif is close to the spirit of the T'ang period as well as to the kind of subject then popular, but the execution is very different from that which we would expect in a genuine T'ang painting. The brush strokes are hard and dry, the whole over-elaborate, suggesting a later copy made by a minor artist who may have seen an original but certainly did not have the talent to reproduce it. Furthermore, the rendering of the atmosphere, especially the mist covering the water and the mountains, proves conclusively that it is the work of a later age.
There are in the collection of the Peking Palace Museum two other paintings by an anonymous artist, one depicting Tu Fu's poem entitled Li Jen Hsing and the other called "Snowing in Shen Lin Garden,"25 both of which in style and subject matter are close to the works discussed above. They are rather poor in quality but for that reason probably closer to the originals than they would have been if the artist who painted them had had a stronger artistic personality. They are no doubt Sung works, though they are done in a very archaic style which, with its elaborate treatment of the architecture and detailed rendition of the mountains, is quite in keeping with what we would expect from the T'ang period. Finally, there is a painting in the collection of Professor Ogawa in Kyoto which is traditionally attributed to Li Chao-tao,26 a long narrative scroll showing a typical T'ang landscape with mountains, water, trees, and buildings, all painted in a careful style with gold outlines and colorful use of blue and green. However, the hard, uninspired quality of the brush strokes would suggest again a Sung or even a Ming copy rather than an original by Li Chao-tao himself.
The landscape painter who by later critics, especially the followers of the so-called Southern School, was regarded as the greatest of all T'ang landscapists was Wang Wei, who was born in 699 and died in 759. Equally celebrated as a poet, whose lyrics are still widely read today, he has been throughout the ages one of the most famous of all Chinese artists. For a long time he was believed to be the author of an essay on landscape painting which bears his name, but modern scholars no longer think that he could have written it since it anticipates ideas which were not current until a later time.27 He started his life as a court official but later retired to his country place, Wang Ch'uan in Shensi, where he lived alone, practicing Buddhist meditation and painting both Buddhist and landscape scrolls. According to the ninth-century critic Chu Ching-hsüan:
His paintings of landscapes, or of pines and rocks, were drawn like those of Master Wu (Tao-tzu) but were outstanding for their taste and nobility.... He did a picture of the Wang River, in which mountains and valleys,