Tang Dynasty

We journey on …

The journey we have embarked on together is authentic; you are joining me, a Western guy who has never travelled in China but only glimpsed it from the peak that overlooks the harbour in Hong Kong as a Royal Naval rating back in the late sixties and again in the early seventies.

Now in the middle of a pandemic and from my living room, we are about to explore not only the landscapes of geographic China but also the minds and hearts of sages, poets, painters, and calligraphers as they introduce us to their China, their roots, their beliefs, their loves, their hopes, fears and destinies. We will journey through five dynasties, starting with the Tang Dynasty.

We will share some of the struggles associated with Chinese Landscape painting as we explore its history and its practicalities of application. Join me as I plan my first landscape painting. We have already touched very briefly on the six principles that underlie Chinese painting, and we will enlarge on these, but for now, let’s dwell on the fifth principle of planning and designing. This is where we start, and I am sure this is where the Masters began also.

I cannot feel the dampness of the morning mists on my skin, nor can I wonder at the shimmering midnight moon as it shines down on the lake. I will not be able to ask for directions from the sage, the monk, the fisherman or the farmer.

The Mustard Seed Gard Manual of Painting is an excellent reference source for a wide variety of components which can be included in a Landscape painting.

I piece together my paintings from books and copies of accomplished historians and painters whose works have come into my hands. However, through the wonders of the internet, we will leap from the West to the mountain peaks of the East and enjoy the colour, excitement, simplicity, depth and exceptional skills of these early Chinese Masters.

I have been practising with the Chinese brush for a few years now, and the framed picture below titled ‘Shades of Summer’ is a copy of an ancient masters painting which I undertook to learn how to paint different methods of portraying tree foilage.

So where do I start with my own first original Chinese Landscape (shanshui water and mountain) painting?

Well it needs a theme and a title. ‘In the beginning’ as we are starting out this is my title and I want:

• a picture that will hint at journeying.
• a foreground and a distant panorama.
• the viewer of my painting to feel that they are perhaps embarking on a journey.

It seems a silly thing to ask, but what format? Landscape or portrait?

Measurements? What mount? Ink, or Ink and colour? Yes, and what style? Now is the time for all these decisions.

Introduction to The Tang Dynasty

The tradition of landscape painting was born during the six dynasties . Still, little progress was made, partly because of the ever increasing demands for Buddhist icons and somewhat because artists struggled with the most elementary problems of space and depth. The final preparations for true landscape art are achievements of the Tang Dynasty. They added two further aspects to the magical and supporting role of landscapes. First, the Landscape became a means of aiding sophisticated decoration. Second, a topographical and descriptive approach is derived from similar interests, producing maps and gazettes.

The Northern and Southern Schools. (The Court Painters and the Scholars). According to later (Ming Dynasty) critics and historians, two schools of landscape painting occurred during the Tang Dynasty. The ‘Blue and Green’ style was practised by the court painter Li SiXùn and his son Li Zhao Dào; it was highly decorative, painted meticulously, and employed a precise line technique similar to that used by earlier artists such as Gù Kaizhi and Zhan Ziqián. In the Ming Dynasty, this became known as the ‘Northern School’ of painting; more on that later.

Wang Wei painting in monochrome ink practised the other spontaneous pomo (‘broken ink’) style using varying shades of ink washes; later, this became known as the ‘Southern School’. It is improbable that either Li, father and son or Wang Wei originated either of these styles; instead, they were the most gifted men to work in already established or well advanced techniques.

Li SiXùn, and Li Zhao Dào… The Northern School

Li SiXùn and Li Zhao Dào are known as ‘BigLi’ and ‘Little Li’ or as ‘General Li’and ‘The Little General’. These names are derived from the rank of General, which they both held in the guard’s regiment.

From all that has been written about the style of the two Lis, however, it appears they brought a highly detailed style to perfection, full of minutely and accurately drawn figures, flora, and fauna.

Their landscapes were rendered in brilliant colour, with blue and green dominating. At times, the rock forms are outlined in gold and the clouds in luminous white. This speculation of what the Li style in Landscape may have looked like is based to some extent on a beautiful Landscape depicting ‘Emperor Ming Huang travelling in Shu’.

This work is executed by a skilful hand in full colour on paper. The colour is once refined and brilliant, with blue, green, and a good deal of red in the mountains, producing an overall glowing pattern that is almost Persian. The Last grand champion of this style was Chiu Yìng of the Ming Dynasty.

Before I introduce you to the next big influencer of the Tang Dynasty, did you bump into this dear old fellow by the lake?

Wáng Wéi …The Southern School

Wáng Wéi traditionally occupies the elevated position of ‘The Father of monochrome landscape painting in ink’. This elevation expresses the belief, shared by all scholar painters from the Sung Dynasty onwards, that a man’s painting, like his handwriting, should be an expression of his qualities rather than his skills. Because Wáng Wéi was the ideal type of man, observers argued that he must have been the perfect type of painter. He was a gifted musician, scholar and poet. He became interested in Buddhism, and his religious nature deepened after the death of his wife in 730 A.D. During his lifetime, he was famous for his snow landscapes.

Still, the work for which later painters best remember him was the long panoramic handscroll depicting his country estate , Wang Chuan, outside Changan.

Wáng Wéi is credited with developing a monochrome landscape painted in the ‘broken ink’ or pomo style. In the technique of Chinese painting, after the outlines of mountains, hills, and individual rocks are drawn, and the central inner markings representing clefts and fissures are added, the form, the geological structure of the rocks, and the effects of erosion are indicated by washes of ink or multiple brush strokes, short or long, soft or abrupt.

Precisely what ‘broken ink’ meant in the eighth century is tough to tell, but what little evidence is available tends to show that it may have been rather broad brush strokes handled in an accessible manner to lend a sense of form through modelling, modelling that had little or nothing to do with a source of light or cast shadows. The Chinese word for this brushwork within the outline or contour of a form is cun, frequently translated as chapped or cracked wrinkles on the face of the mountain, hill, or rock.

Trials and Tribulations

Born into a family that had contributed thirteen prime ministers to the T’ang Court, Wáng Wéi life got off to a good start. He was a skilful poet and musician by the age of fifteen and was also a brilliant academic.

He had to contend with many setbacks, including demotion, exile, and forced service during the An Lushan uprisings.

This rebellion led to very dark days; indeed, the devastation of the population was not only a direct result of the combat casualties and civilian deaths as a result of warfare but due to the widespread dislocations of the social and economic system, especially in the north and central areas of China, mass starvation and disease also resulted in death by the millions.

A census taken in 755 recorded a population of 52,919,309 in 8,914,709 taxpaying households. However, another taken in 764, the year following the end of the rebellion, recorded only 16,900,000 in 2,900,000 homes.

Amid this turmoil, Wáng Wéi had had to contend with the death of his wife at the age of thirty and, twenty years later, the loss of his mother. However, he never remarried, and in later life, he found solace in his Chan Buddhist/Taoist faith and the landscapes surrounding his Wang Ch’uan estate. I will link to another contribution by David Hinton, which enables us to taste the solace that Wáng Wéi enjoyed in his closing days.

Before we move on, I feel it would be good to reflect on the impact which the Tang Dynasty of China had on East and Central Asia:

Continue Reading About The Song Dynasty