The T'ang period had been the golden age of Chinese poetry. It had
witnessed an extraordinary outburst of religious fervor, and the
overwhelming domination of Buddhism. It had, moreover, triumphantly
re-established the unity of the empire and to the pride of intellectual
activity it could add the pride of might and dominion. But the same cannot
be said for the Sung period. From a political standpoint its history is
one of cumulative disaster. Ancient China retreated by degrees before the
thrusts of the barbarians, until the great thunderbolt of Genghis Khan's
conquest, reverberating with formidable echoes throughout all Asia,
announced the approaching downfall of culture in the red dawn of a new
era.
The Sung culture, totally different from that of the T'ang period, was,
however, swept forward to its culmination. It would seem as if, under the
menace of the barbarians, the mind had set for its goal the development of
ideas embryonic in earlier work, formulating them in haste and arresting
them finally in perfect yet sad images, in which the heights attained were
haunted by the shadow of impending ruin.
[Illustration: PLATE XI. LANDSCAPE BY MA LIN
Sung Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.]
The dynasty opened with a classical reaction against new ideas and
witnessed a return to Confucian philosophy, with its conception of the
State. But centuries of history had not rolled by without effect. In the
tenth and eleventh centuries the ancient writings were no longer
understood with their original meaning. A whole series of philosophers, of
whom the last is Chu Hsi (thirteenth century), had formulated a composite
doctrine resulting in what might be called an official philosophy, which
has dominated to the present day. Some bold spirits, however, opposed this
reactionary codification, struggling in vain to give a positive and firm
structure to the doomed empire. Their influence appears to have been
considerable. Just as the old heterodox philosophy was being stifled by
the dry and colorless metaphysics of the conservatives, it was awakened to
new life by the painters, who gave it a stirring interpretation in their
work.
The period of technical research was past. At first, with care and
patience, forms had been determined by drawing. Color had remained a thing
apart, regarded as a work of illumination and quite distinct from drawing.
Then study was extended still further. Color came to be viewed in the
light of shades and tones and became one of the means for the expression
of form; it became the very drawing itself,--that which reveals the basic
structure.
Wang Wei represents the moment when art, emancipating itself from problems
already solved, had conquered every medium of expression. Such is the
tradition which he bequeathed to the Sung artists, who were destined to
add thereto such supreme masterpieces.
The Sung painters were haunted by the old philosophical beliefs as to the
formation of the universe. Beyond the actual surroundings they dimly
perceived a magic world made up of perfect forms. Appearances were but the
visible covering of the two great principles whose combination engendered
life. They believed that, in painting, they did more than to reproduce the
external form of things. They labored with the conviction that they were
wresting the soul from objects, in order to transfer it to the painted
silk. Thus they created something new, an imaginary world more beautiful
than the real world, wherein the intimate relation of beings and things
was disclosed,--a world pervaded by pure spirit and one which was revealed
only to those whose thought was sufficiently enlightened, and whose
sympathies were sufficiently broad, to understand and to be stirred.
The painters of the line of Wang Wei during the Sung period, devoted
themselves chiefly to the development of painting in monochrome. They
pursued the study of relations of tones and values of shading up to the
limit of extreme delicacy, and if they mingled color at all with their
subtle evocations, it was with a feeling of unequalled restraint. They
dwelt for the most part in intimacy with Nature. Fleeing from the cares
of court and city, they retired into mountain solitudes, meditating for
long periods before taking up the brush to paint. Thus they portrayed
those mountains enveloped in mists, wherein was revealed the harmony of
the two principles which control the universe. From the depths of valleys
misty vapors arose and cedars and gigantic pines reared their majestic
forms, while, on the threshold of a thatched cabin upon some rocky
plateau, a hermit deep in meditation contemplated the vast expanse of a
landscape of august grandeur.
[Illustration: PLATE XII. MONGOL HORSEMAN RETURNING FROM THE HUNT
By Chao Meng-fu. Yuean Period. Doucet Collection.]
Sometimes, turning to plant forms, they painted the bamboo in black and
white. A single masterly stroke sufficed to draw the cylindrical stalk
from one joint to another, or the pointed leaves which are so quivering
with life that we seem to hear the plaintive voice of the wind "combed,"
as the Chinese writings express it, "by the reeds." Or again, when a
flower was the subject, they suggested it with a simplicity that
presupposes a scientifically exact study of forms. It was by no means the
splendid image which they sought to grasp but the soul itself; at one time
the flower barely open in all its enchanting freshness, at another the
softened petals drooping in languid fashion, revealing a splendor still
present but soon to fade; at times the dew moistening the leaves, the snow
shrouding them with its purity, or the slow monotonous rain beneath which
they drip, motionless. These paintings are always instinct with deep
poetic feeling.
At the hands of the Sung painters the school of landscape and monochrome
technique attained a level which will never be exceeded. The masters of
this period are numerous and are frequently represented by works of almost
certain authenticity. It seems useless to assemble here names which will
convey no meaning to the European reader. It will suffice to illustrate by
a few great figures the three centuries of history during which Chinese
landscape painting reached its culminating point.
Tung Yuean and Chue Jan are considered by the critics as having founded a
special school in the great tradition of Wang Wei. Their paintings were
quiet in coloring and were executed with broad strokes in an impressionist
style. These works must be viewed from a distance to see their apparent
violence merge into extreme elegance. They furnish a complete
demonstration of the laws of atmospheric perspective, with its feeling of
distance and infinite space, in which forms are immersed. Here we find
evidence that these painters were the first to attempt the arrangement of
lines according to rule, which led ultimately to calligraphic painting.
Among the heads of schools cited in the Chinese writings Ma Yuean and Hsia
Kuei of the Sung dynasty must be placed in a class by themselves. Both of
these masters lived at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the
thirteenth centuries. Their style can be described with accuracy since
original examples are extant--both by themselves and by their
disciples--in which their characteristics are fully revealed.
Ma Yuean is classed with the Southern School by reason of his restraint in
the use of color, his greatness of conception and his technical treatment
of forms. But he brings to his work a virility in which the influence of
the Northern School is plainly discerned. He has a broad stroke and a
masterful manner which place his works in the front rank of all Chinese
painting. His mountainous backgrounds rear themselves with fierce energy.
His old pines, with branches wreathed in vines, would suffice alone to
define his style, so freely do they express the force of plant life and
the proud defiance of the aged tree. He loved the mountain solitudes to
which he gave a new imagery, so authoritative and so perfect that it
served to create a school.
The influence of Ma Yuean was felt by his brother and by his son, Ma Lin.
Although the death of the latter occurred under the Mongolian dynasty, he
was an exponent of Sung art. The fierce energy of the old master gives way
to a somewhat more melancholy and gentle quality in his son. There is the
same restraint in the handling of the brush, the same reserve in the use
of color, but the landscape stretches out into deep and dreamy vistas that
are indescribably poetic. The melancholy of autumn, the sadness of flights
of birds that circle in the evening light, the feeling of seclusion and
silence, such are the things in which this poetic spirit finds its joy,
true heir of the master mind whose genius found expression in the wild
aspects of nature.
The school of Ma dominated the entire subsequent period and his influence
extended as far as Korea, where traces of it were still to be found as
late as the fifteenth century. As the history of Korean painting becomes
better known, we shall be able to say with more accuracy what it owes to
other Chinese masters; but in so far as those mentioned are concerned,
their influence appears to have been sufficiently strong to impress a
certain type on fragmentary works from Korea which have become known to us
recently.
We are far from being as well informed regarding Hsia Kuei, but we have
that which is worth more than written records, a few paintings preserved
in Japanese collections, which it seems legitimate to attribute to him
without reservation. It is readily seen why his name is always linked with
that of Ma Yuean. His work shows the same energy and power and discloses an
ideal which is similar to that of his confrere. He seems to have
penetrated even further than Ma Yuean along the path of daring
simplifications, and to have approached at times the calligraphic style.
He painted both landscape and figures and was skilled in obtaining strange
effects, as if of color, through his use of monochrome.
Another painter whose name dominates the history of this time and whose
work serves to characterize a special aspect is Li Lung-mien. It is
naturally difficult to prove that all the works attributed to him are
authentic. However, collections in Japanese temples or privately owned,
possess paintings which passed as his at a very early date and in which at
least we can recognize his style. In reviewing the centuries of history,
it is interesting to note that the work of Li Lung-mien is not without
similarity, in certain of its elements, to the paintings of Ku K'ai-chih.
His line is delicate and flexible and he draws his outlines with the same
subtlety, the same grace and the same instinct for harmonious curves and
an extraordinary rhythm.
The tradition which arose in a period antedating the T'ang epoch was
therefore still unbroken in the Sung period, and I am sure that proofs of
this will increase in number as our information becomes more accurate. New
evidence furnished by the paintings found at Tun-huang and certain
frescoes at Murtuq has recently shown that the type of Buddhist
hermit--the Lohan meditating in solitude--whose inception had, until these
discoveries, been attributed to Li Lung-mien, in reality dated much
further back and originated in the Buddhist art of Eastern Turkestan,
perhaps even in India. From those regions are derived the magnificent
subjects of which Li Lung-mien made use to express meditation. Sometimes
there are emaciated faces, withered bodies with protruding tendons that
outline deep hollows, and again rotund and peaceful figures meditating in
tranquil seclusion. From the written records as well as in his works,
there is every evidence that he was one of those who revived Buddhist
painting. No matter what models he chose to follow, he always gave them a
stress and a peculiar distinction, while from the standpoint of pure art
he had the ability to portray them with finished elegance and majestic
dignity.
Li Lung-mien was not content to paint Buddhist figures only. He painted
landscape also, and in his youth he had painted horses. A great critic of
the Sung period said of him that "his soul entered into communion with all
things, his spirit penetrated the mysteries and the secrets of nature."
This critic added that one day he saw Li Lung-mien painting a Buddhist
divinity. The words of the god fairly leapt from the lines; it seemed as
if the brush of the master summoned them one by one into being. Like all
the masters of his time, Li Lung-mien sought to free the spirit from its
outward semblance. Beyond the material, he perceived the immaterial force
which animates the world. As a landscape painter his conception of Nature
was broad and majestic. His graceful and harmonious line recalls the
happiest moments in the history of plastic art, and he challenges
comparison with a facile genius like Raphael. But he includes the whole
realm of nature in his subjects, and in his work we find traces, expressed
with greater breadth, but with quite as keen an insight, of an ancient
and noble art, such as was found almost extinct in the work of Ku
K'ai-chih.
[Illustration: PLATE XIII. PIGEONS BY CH'IEN HSUeAN
Yuean Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.]
We cannot leave the Sung painters without devoting some attention to Mi
Fei and his son. The two Mi's, indeed, accomplished a far-reaching reform
in Chinese technique; they enriched painting with a new imagery and
founded a school which, like that of Ma, exerted an influence on later
periods and was strongly felt in Korea.
In addition to being a great painter, Mi Fei was a great calligraphist.
This is apparent however little one may have seen of work in his style. He
possesses in the highest degree what the Chinese describe as the "handling
of flowing ink." He used the technique of monochrome almost exclusively,
and so closely related tone values to the line, or rather to the
brush-stroke, that it is difficult to decide whether he paints rather than
draws, or draws rather than paints. Properly speaking, he does not employ
the line at all but works by masses, by broad, heavily inked touches,
without pausing to emphasize the deep warm blacks provided by Chinese ink.
His manner recalls certain drawings by Rembrandt, also produced by strong
inking, which evoke a strange and magical effect of light. Such was the
spirit in which Mi Fei treated landscape. This technique marks his style
and gives it an individuality that is indisputable. The vehemence with
which he attacks forms, the rapidity of his brush-stroke, the way in which
things spring from such energy, call to mind pictures by European
masters, painted in full color, and it may be said of the paintings of Mi
Fei that they are fairly _colored_ by their tremendous vitality, if the
quality of the materials he employed permits the use of such a term.
Therefore Mi Fei and his son are responsible for a new technique, a
strongly individual work, and the creation of a style which marks the
highest achievement in monochrome. The trend which impelled them was,
however, general. Carried to its extreme it led to the style of painting
called calligraphic, of which there has been occasion to speak several
times.
Calligraphic painting, or the _literary style_, has its origin in the
studies of Wang Wei when, renouncing the aid of colour, he strove by
harmony of shading and by tone values, to reproduce the vast reaches of
space and all the shifting subtlety of atmospheric perspective. The
exclusive use of Chinese ink necessitated special studies since thus
calligraphy was directly approached. The different styles of writing are
almost drawing in themselves. Each style of writing has its own rules for
dissecting the written character and making the stroke. Now, as is known,
the Chinese painters attached supreme importance to the line and to the
brush-stroke. This was due in part to their equipment and in part to the
fact that the amateurs of art were prepared by their classical studies to
appreciate the strength or the delicacy of a line judged for itself, quite
independently of the forms represented. We must also bear in mind that
all of the Chinese painters were scholars, belonging to the class of the
literati.[14] Writers, poets, statesmen, soldiers, Buddhist or Taoist
priests, and philosophers have all furnished the greatest names in art.
Under such conditions the technical relationship between the line of the
painter and that of the calligraphist was closer, since painter and
calligraphist were frequently united in one and the same person. Thence
came the early tendency to use monochrome and to represent forms in the
abstract, rendering them more and more as mere themes, thus reducing the
subject to a few simple calligraphic strokes.
[14] The literati, or lettered class, were the aristocracy in what
was the most democratic of absolute monarchies. No matter how humble
his origin, anyone of the male sex was eligible to compete in the
examinations which were based upon literary knowledge and memory of
the classics. Proficiency in handwriting was a natural result. The
successful candidate might aspire to any post in the empire, as
official positions were bestowed through literary merit. During three
days and two nights at the time of examination the candidate was not
allowed to leave his tiny box-like cell, lacking even space to lie
down. Cases of death during the examinations were not infrequent. The
examination halls in Peking are now destroyed and those in Nanking
with 20,000 cells are crumbling away.--TRANSLATOR.
It is difficult for a European to follow the thought of the Chinese
painters in these daring simplifications. Sometimes they are carried to
such an extreme as to leave us with a feeling of perplexity. Often however
they give rise to mighty conceptions and paintings whose essential
character impresses us as a unique product of genius. Calligraphic
painting reached its highest level during the Sung and Yuean periods. It
was so closely allied to painting that the Emperor Hui Tsung, who ascended
the throne in 1100, founded the Imperial Academy of Calligraphy and
Painting in the first year of his reign. Hui Tsung was himself a painter.
The books credit him with especial mastery in the representation of birds
of prey, eagles, falcons and hawks, which seems to be sufficient reason
for deliberately attributing to him every painting of a bird of prey, even
when there is evidence that it was painted two or three centuries later
than his time. Perhaps before long we shall find authentic paintings by
Hui Tsung. A painting belonging to the Musee Guimet, which comes from the
collection of Tuan Fang, is the one which by its annotations bears the
greatest guaranty of authenticity, but it is a representation of a figure
painting of the T'ang dynasty and gives us no information as to the manner
in which Hui Tsung painted eagles. However, certain paintings from his
collections have come down to us. Whether or not by the imperial hand they
proclaim a virile art, an instinct for the grandiose and a majestic
character which are the qualities of which the eagle is a symbol.
The foundation of the Academy of Calligraphy and Painting had results
quite other than those hoped for by its founder. It became imbued with the
evils of formalism. It was established in the imperial capital in court
surroundings, in other words, in an atmosphere from which true artists
depart with all possible speed. It suffered inevitably through the
influences of a taste, refined it is true, but which already inclined
toward mannerisms and preciosity. Conventions were established, subjects
became stereotyped, the taste for brilliant colors developed and, even
before the end of the Sung period, there was a marked division between
academic and national art. Pedantry and affectation began to take the
place of boldness and strength.
Doubtless this tendency would have developed still further but for a
series of disasters and the menace of a new dynasty looming on the horizon
of Central Asia, which was already resounding with the clash of Mongol
arms.