Anatomy of a Masterpiece: How to Read Chinese Paintings

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Han Gan, a leading horse painter of the Tang dynasty (618–907), was known for portraying not only the physical likeness of a horse but also its spirit. This painting, the most famous of the works attributed to the artist, is a portrait of Night-Shining White, a favorite charger of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–56). The fiery-tempered steed, with its burning eye, flaring nostrils, and dancing hooves, epitomizes Chinese myths about imported "celestial steeds" that "sweated blood" and were actually dragons in disguise.

The sensitive and precise drawing, reinforced by delicate shading in ink, is an example of baihua, or "white painting," a term used in Tang texts to describe monochrome painting with ink shading, as opposed to painting in full color. The later term baimiao, or "white drawing," denotes line drawing without shading, as seen in the paintings by Li Gonglin (ca. 1049–1106). The numerous seals and inscriptions added to this handscroll and its borders by later owners and appreciators are a distinctive feature of Chinese collecting and connoisseurship. While collectors were sometimes overzealous in showing their appreciation in this manner, the seals and comments added by later viewers record a work's transmission and offer vivid testimony of its continuing impact on later generations.

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The copying of sutras, the sacred texts of Buddhism and Daoism, was an act of devotion as well as a means of propagating the faith. It required a special brush, paper of a conventional size with a vertical grid, and the use of the strictest, most formal script. This hallowed fragment of a Daoist religious text meets all of those requirements yet has an elegance and fluency that elevate it beyond normal sutra writing. Commissioned in 738 by Princess Yuzhen, a daughter of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–56), this writing exemplifies the sophisticated court style of the High Tang period. The small script is balanced and harmonious, with every stroke, hook, and dot perfectly defined and executed. Applied with a stiff, long-pointed brush, each stroke shows clean, crisp movements and graceful, saber-sharp turns. Individual characters are straight, upright, and firmly built, with a rectangular frame of supports and walls. The construction of the characters reveals an analytical process: different types of brushstrokes are seen as forces (shi) in a dynamic composition, each having a perfect form and a "method" (fa) of interacting with the other strokes; each character, with its elegant, carefully considered deployment of those forces, exemplifies a model of physical equilibrium and spiritual repose. In the early seventeenth century, this sutra was acquired by the influential painter, calligrapher, and theorist Dong Qichang (1555–1636), who regarded it as one of the finest extant examples of Tang dynasty small writing. Dong reluctantly lent the sutra to a Mr. Zhen for inclusion in a set of rubbings of model calligraphies, the Bohai cangzhen, but held back twelve columns for safekeeping. Dong was justified in his apprehension; the surviving forty-three columns that we celebrate today are those that were removed from the sutra by the unscrupulous Mr. Zhen.

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Between the years 900 and 1100, Chinese painters created visions of landscape that "depicted the vastness and multiplicity" of creation itself. The viewer of these works is meant to identify with a human figure in the painting, so he may "walk through, ramble, or dwell" in the landscape. In Summer Mountains, lush forests suffused with mist identify the time as a midsummer evening. Moving from right to left, travelers make their way toward a temple retreat where vacationers are seated together enjoying the view. Above the temple roofs the central mountain sits in commanding majesty, the ultimate climax to man's universe. The advanced use of texture strokes and ink wash suggests that Summer Mountains, formerly attributed to Yan Wengui (active ca. 970–1030), is by a master working in the Yan idiom about 1050, a date corroborated by the presence of collectors' seals belonging to the Song emperor Huizong (r. 1101–25). Although there is no record of paintings by Yan Wengui in Huizong's collection, three works entitled Summer Scenery by Yan's eleventh-century follower Qu Ding are listed in the emperor's painting catalogue.

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Guo Xi was the preeminent landscape painter of the late eleventh century. Friends with many leading scholar-officials including the poets Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, Guo sought to give form to poetic images and emotions rather than the "principles" (li) of nature. He was particularly interested in conveying the nuances of season and time of day.

Guo Xi's painting is a variation on the classic level distance formula originated by Li Cheng (919Ôø967)Ôøtall foreground trees set against a wide river valley. The "level distance" (pingyuan) compositionÔøa view across a broad lowland expanseÔøis one of three conventional ways that early Chinese artists conceptualized landscape. The other two are "high distance" (gaoyuan), a view of towering mountains, and a "deep distance" (shenyuan), a view past tall mountains into the distance. Although Guo continued the Li Cheng idiom of "crab-claw" trees and "devil-face" rocks, his innovative brushwork and use of ink are rich, almost extravagant, in contrast to the earlier master's severe and sparing style.

Old Trees, Level Distance compares closely in brushwork and forms to Early Spring, Guo Xi's masterpiece dated 1072, in the National Palace Museum, Taibei. In both paintings, landscape forms simultaneously emerge from and recede into a dense, moisture-laden atmosphere: rocks and distant mountains are suggested by outlines, texture strokes, and ink washes that run into each other to create an impression of wet, blurry surfaces. Guo Xi describes his technique in his painting treatise: "After the outlines are made clear by dark ink strokes, use ink wash mixed with blue to retrace these outlines repeatedly so that, even if the ink outlines are clear, they appear always as if they had just come out of the mist and dew" (Linquan gaozhi [Lofty Ambitions in Forests and Streams]).

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Poet, calligrapher, and Chan (Zen) Buddhist adept, Huang Tingjian shared his contemporary Su Shi's (1036–1101) view that calligraphy should be spontaneous and self-expressive—"a picture of the mind."

Biographies is one of Huang's two surviving masterpieces of cursive writing. The scroll measures nearly sixty feet in length and contains some 1,700 characters. The round brush lines and curvilinear forms recall the "wild cursive" writing of the "mad monk" Huaisu (ca. 735–800), whose Autobiography Huang saw in 1094. Huang's choice of text supports a date of shortly after 1094 for the scroll. That year, Huang was exiled to Sichuan, owing to factional politics at court. Biographies, which transcribes the first-century-B.C. Shiji account of the rivalry of two court officials, may well reflect Huang's feeling that his banishment was the result of someone's personal malice. Huang's transcription ends abruptly with the line "Put the needs of the country first and private grievances last." It is likely that the final section of the biography and Huang's signature were removed not long after he wrote the scroll by an owner who wished to avoid political reprisal for possessing a work by such a prominent dissident.

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Huizong, the eighth Song emperor and a rapacious collector of art objects, was a painter and calligrapher of great talent. In 1127, Huizong's capital at Bianliang (modern Kaifeng, Henan Province) was sacked by the Jurchen, and the emperor was carried off to the north; he died in captivity in 1135. Finches and Bamboo illustrates the suprarealistic style of flower-and-bird painting preferred by Huizong's Painting Academy. In such works, the artist displayed his intimate knowledge of the appearance and growth of plants and his ability to render accurately the movements of birds as they hop about or stand poised ready for flight. Whether he was making a study from nature or illustrating a line of poetry, however, capturing the spirit of the subject was valued above mere literal representation. Here, the minutely observed finches are imbued with the alertness and sprightly vitality of their living counterparts. Drops of lacquer added to the birds' eyes impart a final lifelike touch.

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Ma Yuan, a fourth-generation member of a family of painters, was a leading artist at the Southern Song Painting Academy in Hangzhou. A city of unsurpassed beauty, Hangzhou was graced with pavilions, gardens, and scenic vistas. In this album leaf, which shows a gentleman in a gardenlike setting, the jagged rhythms of the pine tree and garden rock contrast with the quiet mood of the scholar, who gazes pensively into the bubbling rapids of a cascade.

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The imported "celestial steed," treasured by early emperors and noble warriors, was a subject favored by such leading painters as Han Gan (act. ca. 740–56) and Li Gonglin (ca. 1049–1106). In the early Yuan period (1272–1368), when alien Mongol rulers curtailed the employment of Chinese scholar-officials, the theme of "groom and horse" became a metaphor pleading for the proper use of scholarly talent, and the famous saying of the Tang essayist Han Yu (762–824) was frequently quoted: "There are always excellent steeds, but not always a Bole, the excellent judge of horses." In Zhao Mengfu's painting, which he executed in early 1296 after having retired from serving under Khubilai Khan (r. 1260–94), the circular, abstract form of the horse serves as a deliberate foil to the sensitively rendered figure of the groom, a portrait, perhaps, of the painting's recipient, who may have been a government recruiter of talents.

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This handscroll depicts an episode from the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Buddhist scripture in which Vimalakirti (the layman) and Manjusri (the Bodhisattva of Wisdom) engage in a theological debate. According to the sutra, Vimalakirti proved the more subtle by remaining silent when asked to explain the ultimate meaning of Buddhist Law.

Superbly rendered in the baimiao ("plain-drawing") style by Wang Zhenpeng, a master known chiefly for his architectural paintings, this work disappeared after the late seventeenth century and was discovered only recently. Following the painting are two important colophons written by the artist that describe the circumstances surrounding its creation: it was executed in 1308 at the command of Renzong, then the heir apparent, who ruled as emperor from 1312 to 1320; the precise location in the palace where Wang received Renzong's order and even the name of the palace guard in attendance that day have been noted. The painter states that he used as his model a composition by a Jin painter named Ma Yunqing (act. ca. 1230) that was itself a copy of a work by Li Gonglin (ca. 1049–1106). A scroll attributed to Li Gonglin in the Palace Museum, Beijing, appears to be the work of Ma Yunqing and the acknowledged model for this painting.

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Wang Meng depicted scholars in their retreats, creating imaginary portraits that capture not the physical likeness of a person or place but rather an interior world of shared associations and ideals. He presented the master of Simple Retreat as a gentleman recluse. Seated at the front gate of a rustic hermitage, he is shown holding a magic fungus, as a servant and two deer approach from the woods. In the courtyard, another servant offers a sprig of herbs to a crane. The auspicious Daoist imagery of fungus, crane, and deer as well as the archaic simplicity of the figures and dwelling evokes a dreamlike vision of paradise.

In creating this visionary world, Wang transformed the monumental landscape imagery of the tenth-century master Dong Yuan. Rocks and trees, animated with fluttering texture strokes, dots, color washes, and daubs of bright mineral pigment, pulse with a calligraphic energy barely contained within the traditional landscape structure. Encircled by this energized mountainscape, the retreat becomes a reservoir of calm at the vortex of a world whose dynamic configurations embody nature's creative potential but may also suggest the ever-shifting terrain of political power.

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One of the leading court painters of bird-and-flower scenes, the Cantonese artist Lin Liang specialized in bold and expressive monochrome depictions of birds in the wild. Never before had there been such hawks as those painted by Lin Liang. Standing like monuments to strength and courage on the highest frozen peaks swept by bitter winds, living in worlds that lesser creatures could not inhabit, Lin's great birds are embodiments of heroism. In contrast to his usual image of hawks silhouetted against the sky and surveying their surroundings from a high perch, however, these noble birds appear withdrawn and reclusive, inviolable and inaccessible, as if lost in a dense forest of old trees and thick bamboo where no one could possibly reach them.

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In his greatest act of infamy, the first emperor of Qin (Qin Shihuangdi) ruthlessly burned books and buried scholars alive to eliminate opposition. A program to reconstruct texts began when the Han dynasty was established in 206 B.C. Fu Sheng retrieved a copy of the Book of Documents that he had hidden and spent the remainder of his days lecturing on it. Here, Fu Sheng is shown discoursing on the text with the official Shao Zuo, who was sent by the emperor. Fu Sheng's daughter, Fu Nu, seated beside him, was a scholar in her own right and aided by translating their local dialect into one familiar to the scribe. Du Jin was trained as a scholar but became a professional painter after failing the jinshi civil-service examination. He cultivated a circle of patrons and literati friends—including the artists Tang Yin and Shen Zhou—in Beijing, where he moved, as well as in Nanjing and Suzhou. Through these contacts, Du Jin played a significant role in the development of a local professional painting style in Suzhou that was basically a refined version of the high academic style of the imperial court. Although this painting no longer bears a signature, it is a classic example of Du Jin's polished academic manner.

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Wen Zhengming painted Living Aloft for his friend Liu Lin (1474–1561) who, at the age of seventy, had retired from government service but had not yet built a home suitable for his new life. Wen's painting presents an idealized vision of life in retirement: separated from the outside world by a stream and rustic wall, two friends enjoy each other's company in a two-story hall that is further isolated in a tall grove of trees. Wen elaborates on the pleasures of such a life in his accompanying poem:

Immortals have always delighted in pavilion-living, Windows open on eight sides—eyebrows smiling.

Up above, towers and halls well up, Down below, clouds and thunder are vaguely sensed.

Reclining on a dais, a glimpse of Japan, Leaning on a balustrade, the sight of Manchuria.

While worldly affairs shift and change In their midst a lofty man is at ease.

Source: After Ling-yün Shih Liu, trans., in Richard Edwards et al., The Art of Wen Cheng-ming [1470–1559]. [Ann Arbor: Museum of Art, University of Michigan, 1976], p. 150.

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Portraits of monarchs for use in the state cult of ancestor worship have a long tradition in China, but the rise of private portraiture as a significant artistic genre only arose during the latter half of the sixteenth century as a result of increased economic prosperity and a growing spirit of individualism. This image epitomizes the late Ming genre of formal portraiture in which the sitter is depicted frontally, with a realistically described face set atop a body that is largely concealed beneath the stylized folds of an engulfing robe. According to the inscription, the painting depicts the artist's relative Yizhai on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday. Unlike an "ancestor portrait," which was typically commissioned after a person's death and was therefore highly schematic, this portrait was painted from life. Nonetheless, the mode of representation is basically linear, with little use of shading to model facial features—a Western technique that was first introduced into China in the sixteenth century and did not become widespread until the mid-seventeenth century. Yizhai is depicted in an informal hat and robe, an indication that he either never held official rank or that he had adopted the costume of a gentleman living in retirement.

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This large, cursive-script frontispiece to a 1591 painting of Luohans by Wu Bin (active ca. 1583–1626) is by the high official and noted calligrapher Mi Wanzhong, who was one of Wu's principal patrons in Beijing. Mi's laudatory text proclaims, "Luohans made manifest."

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This album plays on the theme of reality versus illusion. The moon is reflected in a basin of water, a flower is next to its image in a mirror, and a butterfly is attracted to chrysanthemums painted on a silk fan. Chen emphasized the multiple levels of his artifice on this album leaf by incorporating his signature within the composition of the fan painting and by screening one wing of the butterfly with the fan, forcing us to view the insect through the painting as well as through the medium of painting. Other artful manipulations are represented by a miniature potted garden, or pencai (bonsai, in Japanese), which shows how man can transform nature, and by a twig with worm-eaten leaves, which underscores how nature constantly transforms itself.

There is no precedent for these symbolic still-life subjects in scholar painting. Instead, these highly sophisticated images, which relate to the ornamental designs found on deluxe crafts of the time, including molded ink cakes, printed stationery, and the carved decoration of Yixing ceramics, reflect Chen Hongshou's early involvement in creating woodblock illustrations for novels and dramas.

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Shitao, born Zhu Ruoji, a scion of the Ming imperial family, escaped death in his youth by taking refuge in the Buddhist priesthood. In 1662 he became a disciple of the powerful Chan (Zen) master Lü'an Benyue (d. 1676). In the late 1660s and 1670s, while living in seclusion in temples around Xuancheng, Anhui Province, he taught himself to paint.

In The Sixteen Luohans, Shitao's earliest major extant work, the young painter, then twenty-five, drew what are possibly the most effective figures since the Yuan period (1279–1368). A rare religious subject for Shitao, known for his visionary landscapes, the scroll depicts the sixteen guardian luohans (saints) ordered by the Buddha to live in the mountains and protect the Buddhist law until the coming of the future Buddha.

Stylistically, the immediate sources for Shitao's figures were late Ming painters, such as Ding Yunpeng (1547–ca. 1621) and Wu Bin (act. ca. 1583–1626). Unlike Wu Bin's luohans, which seem to be merely grotesque caricatures, Shitao's are carefully observed, showing such thoroughly human qualities as humor and curiosity.

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By the mid-1670s Gong Xian's confidence as a painter had taught him to avoid an overly skillful or popular style. He wrote: "Nowadays when people paint they do only what appeals to the common eye; I alone do not seek to please the present."

In this album, both paintings and inscriptions attest to Gong's striving after a spiritual communion with earlier masters while creating a pictorial vocabulary all his own. Departing from his densely textured, monumental landscape style of the 1660s, Gong moved toward a sparser manner in which each brushstroke is made to function calligraphically as well as descriptively, embodying both expressive and representational meaning. The album's format—paintings accompanied by art-historical comments—reminds us that Gong Xian taught painting for a living.

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After decades spent concealing his identity as a descendant of the Ming royal house, Bada Shanren, at the age of seventy-six, seems in this forceful depiction of eagles to be declaring his proud defiance of Manchu Qing rule. There is no immediate precedent for such imagery; instead, the painting harks back to the powerful representations of eagles and hawks created by the early Ming court artist Lin Liang (ca. 1416–1480). Lin's heroic birds are emblems of strength and courage suitable for presentation to military officials. Bada, a fervent Ming loyalist, has personalized this imagery, transforming the conventional symbolism into an expression of brave confrontation and unfaltering loyalty: his noble birds stand sentinel over a landscape now occupied by foreign conquerors.