Great Masters & Further Study

One warning belongs at the start. Attribution in Chinese painting is unusually difficult. Copying was a formal part of training, later painters worked deliberately in the manner of earlier ones, forgery has been an industry for centuries, and many celebrated early works survive only through copies. Museum labels increasingly reflect this with careful wording, and a viewer should read attributions as claims rather than facts.

Before the Song

Gu Kaizhi, around 344 to 406, is the earliest painter with a substantial reputation and surviving associated works, all through later copies. Fine, even, wire-like line and figures with vivid expression.

Wu Daozi, eighth century, of whom nothing survives, became the model of the inspired painter working at speed on temple walls. His reputation is entirely textual, which is worth noticing.

Zhang Xuan and Zhou Fang, both eighth century, define the Tang court-lady type, known through copies and through comparison with tomb murals.

The Song landscape masters

Fan Kuan, active around 1000, painted the single most famous Chinese landscape, a towering wooded mountain with a thread of waterfall and a tiny mule train at the base. Dense, granular rock texture and overwhelming physical presence.

Guo Xi, eleventh century, is both a major painter and the author of the essential landscape essay. His crab-claw trees and swirling, cloud-like rock forms are instantly recognisable.

Li Cheng, Dong Yuan and Juran complete the founding group, Li Cheng in the northern manner and the latter two establishing the softer southern manner that literati painters preferred.

Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, around 1200, developed the corner composition of the Southern Song academy, with sharply defined foreground elements against large empty areas.

The Yuan and Ming

Zhao Mengfu, 1254 to 1322, argued for reviving ancient methods and for the identity of calligraphic and painterly brushwork. Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zan and Wang Meng are the four Yuan masters whose manners the next six centuries copied. Ni Zan's spare compositions with an empty pavilion and dry pale brushwork are the type most often imitated.

Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming and Tang Yin lead the Suzhou scholar-painters of the Ming. Dong Qichang, 1555 to 1636, matters more as a theorist than as a painter, since his division of the tradition into Northern and Southern schools shaped everything written afterwards.

The individualists and the moderns

Bada Shanren, 1626 to 1705, a Ming prince who survived the dynasty's fall, painted single fish, birds and flowers with extreme economy and an unsettling emotional charge. Shitao, 1642 to 1707, painted with great variety and wrote the most vigorous theoretical argument against orthodoxy.

Qi Baishi, 1864 to 1957, is the most popular Chinese painter of the twentieth century, painting shrimp, crabs, insects and vegetables with directness and warmth. Huang Binhong, 1865 to 1955, produced late landscapes of accumulated ink so dense they approach abstraction, and his reputation has risen steadily since his death.

Zhang Daqian, 1899 to 1983, mastered every historic manner, forged convincingly enough to place works in major museums, and in later life produced large splashed-colour works engaging with abstraction. Xu Beihong, 1895 to 1953, trained in Paris and argued for reforming Chinese painting through Western realism.

The theoretical texts

Xie He's six principles, from the fifth century, are brief and foundational. Zong Bing's essay on landscape from the same period is the earliest theoretical treatment of the genre. Guo Xi's eleventh-century essay is the fullest and most practical account of landscape method and theory.

Zhang Yanyuan's ninth-century record of famous painters is the first comprehensive history of Chinese painting and is the source for much of what is known about earlier periods. Dong Qichang's writings define the orthodoxy. Shitao's remarks on painting are the most sustained argument for the opposite position and are unusually difficult even in Chinese.

Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih's Early Chinese Texts on Painting collects translations of the major sources and is the practical way to reach this material in English.

Books in English

James Cahill's multi-volume history, covering the Yuan through the Qing volume by volume, is the standard scholarly account and is readable. Michael Sullivan's The Arts of China is the best single-volume general introduction covering all media. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, by Richard Barnhart and colleagues, is the standard survey specifically of painting and is well illustrated.

Craig Clunas's Art in China takes a deliberately different approach, organising by function and social context rather than by chronology of masters, and it is an effective corrective to the literati-centred narrative. Wen Fong's writings, particularly on the relationship between calligraphy and painting, address the technical questions directly.

Where to see original work

The National Palace Museum in Taipei holds the greatest concentration of the imperial collection, including many of the most famous works, though these are rotated and shown only occasionally. The Palace Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum and the Liaoning Provincial Museum hold major collections.

Outside China, the strongest collections are the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Freer Gallery in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Musée Guimet in Paris. The Boston and Freer collections in particular contain early works of great importance.

For wall painting, the Yongle Palace in Shanxi is the outstanding Taoist site, and the Dunhuang caves are the outstanding Buddhist one. Both require planning to visit and both are worth it.

The problem of copies and forgeries

This deserves separate treatment because it affects everything. Copying was a legitimate part of training and of transmission, and a good copy was valued. Painting in the manner of an old master was a normal practice and was not deception. Outright forgery for profit has existed since at least the Song and became highly organised.

The consequence is that a great many works bearing famous names are not by those painters, and specialists disagree about specific cases. Some celebrated attributions have been challenged for decades without resolution.

For a general viewer this need not be paralysing. Look at the painting rather than the label. A superb painting attributed uncertainly to a famous name is still a superb painting, and the question of who made it, while genuinely interesting, is a specialist matter.

Working from reproductions

Most study happens through reproductions, and their limitations are specific. Ink density and the subtlety of pale washes reproduce poorly. Scale is lost entirely, and a two-metre hanging scroll and a fan-shaped album leaf look the same size on a screen. Handscrolls are usually reproduced fully extended, which is not how they work.

Buy the largest and best-printed reproductions you can of a few works rather than many small ones. Where possible, note the actual dimensions and imagine them. Museum websites increasingly offer very high resolution images that allow brushwork to be examined closely, and these are genuinely useful for study in a way that printed books rarely are.

Learning to paint

The traditional sequence begins with the four gentlemen, learned in order: orchid, bamboo, plum, chrysanthemum. Each teaches a distinct brush problem and none requires colour or drawing skill. After these come rocks and trees, then simple landscape compositions, then the copying of specific old masters.

Calligraphy is normally studied alongside, and teachers who omit it are leaving out the foundation of the line. Expect the first months to be repetitive; painting a hundred orchid leaves is the exercise, not a preliminary to it.

Teaching is available in Chinese communities everywhere and increasingly online. Instructional manuals in the traditional style are widely published and are useful as vocabulary. Materials are cheap at the level a student needs, and the main early expense is paper, which is consumed rapidly and should be.

Women painters

The record is thin for the same social reasons that apply to calligraphy and poetry. Guan Daosheng, 1262 to 1319, wife of Zhao Mengfu, painted bamboo and is the best documented early woman painter. Wen Shu, 1595 to 1634, of the Wen family of Suzhou, painted flowers and plants with delicacy and had a genuine professional reputation.

A substantial number of women painted in the Ming and Qing, in two quite different situations: daughters and wives of gentry families who painted as an accomplishment, and courtesans in the entertainment quarters of Nanjing and Suzhou who were trained in painting, calligraphy and poetry as part of their profession. Work by both groups survives in some quantity and has been the subject of serious scholarship since the 1980s.

The disparity in the record is not evidence about ability. It reflects who was taught, whose work was collected and mounted, whose paintings were inherited rather than discarded, and who wrote the histories.

Key points

• Attribution is unusually difficult because copying was formal training, working in old manners was normal, and forgery has been organised for centuries.
• Wu Daozi's enormous reputation rests entirely on written accounts, since nothing by him survives.
• The four Yuan masters set the models copied for the next six centuries, with Ni Zan the most imitated.
• Dong Qichang matters more as the theorist who divided the tradition into Northern and Southern schools than as a painter.
• The strongest collections are in Taipei and Beijing, with major holdings at the Metropolitan, Freer, Boston, Cleveland, British Museum and Guimet.
• Learning begins with the four gentlemen, calligraphy is studied alongside, and repetition of single subjects is the exercise rather than a preliminary.