Northern Song Landscape Painting

At first glance, Song and Yuan landscapes seem to conform to a narrow set of compositional types, with requisite central mountains, hidden temples, and scholars strolling along a path. In fact, the landscape tradition developed slowly as painters gained technical facility and consciously chose to allude to earlier styles or bring out philosophical or political ideas in their work.

Fan Kuan's Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, nearly seven feet tall, focuses on a central majestic mountain. The foreground, presented at eye level, is executed in crisp, well-defined brush strokes. Jutting boulders, tough scrub trees, a mule train on the road, and a temple in the forest on the cliff are all vividly depicted.
Click here to see a close-up of the foreground and one of the people depicted in this painting. [In the guide, below]

Four or five different types of trees are depicted in this painting. Click here to see a closer view of some of them. [In the guide, below]

Fan Kuan creates rocks, trees, and all other elements in the painting through texture strokes and washes. For close up views, click here. [In the guide, below]

Do you think Fan Kuan's painting encourages any particular emotional response in the viewer?

Fan Kuan (early 11th c.), Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

SOURCE: Fu Xinian, ed., Zhongguo meishu quanji, Huihua bian 3: Liang Song huihua, shang (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1988), pl. 7, p. 9. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Hanging scroll, ink on silk, 206.3 x 103.3 cm.

A close-up of the foreground and one of the people depicted in the painting.

In the detail above, can you see where the path ends and where the river begins?
What does the mule train add to the painting? Why make it so small?

SOURCE: Guoli gugong bowuyuan, Fan Kuan Qishan Xinglu (Taibei: National Palace Museum, 1979), p. 19.

A close-up of trees

Note the way leaves twist and turn in space around branches.

SOURCE: Guoli gugong bowuyuan, Fan Kuan Qishan Xinglu (Taibei: National Palace Museum, 1979), p. 16.

Close-ups of other elements in the painting

Can you imagine how Fan Kuan would have used his brush? How many times would he have come back to this scene to add more strokes?

Are the same sorts of strokes used in both of these details?

SOURCE: Guoli gugong bowuyuan, Fan Kuan Qishan Xinglu (Taibei: National Palace Museum, 1979), p. 30.

How did Fan Kuan create an illusion of three-dimensional space through brush strokes?

What is the effect of lighter and darker tones of ink in depicting rocks?

SOME THOUGHTS: Many observers have seen in this painting a concern with centrality and balance, a desire for "things in their place," which carries social and political overtones. Does the massive central mountain represent the emperor or the central government? Does the tri-partite structure evoke the notion of heaven, earth, and man? Do the gnarled trees bring up issues of aging and perseverance? What of the Daoist temple in middle ground? Other aspects that evoke Daoist ideas to many viewers are the dwarfing of the men by the enormity of nature and the water and mist that evoke the vital energies of the earth and ideas of yin and yang.

Guo Xi, the painter of the landscape shown in a detail at right, was a court painter in the late eleventh century. He left significant writings on the philosophy and technique of landscape painting. In answer to the question, Why landscape?, he wrote:

"A virtuous man takes delight in landscapes so that in a rustic retreat he may nourish his nature, amid the carefree play of streams and rocks, he may take delight, that he might constantly meet in the country fishermen, woodcutters, and hermits, and see the soaring of cranes and hear the crying of monkeys. The din of the dusty world and the locked-in-ness of human habitations are what human nature habitually abhors; on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what the human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find. "

Guo Xi (ca. 1020-1090), Early Spring, dated 1072; detail

SOURCE: James Cahill, Ge jiang shan se - Hills Beyond A River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368, Taiwan edition (Taipei: Shitou gufen youxian gongsi, 1994), pl. 2.6, p. 71. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan.
Detail of hanging scroll, ink and light colors on silk, 158.3 x 108.1 cm.

For a full view and details, click here... [In the guide, below]

Early Spring, done in 1072, is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Northern Song monumental landscape tradition. It is a rare example of an early painting executed by a court professional who signed and dated his work.

How do man and nature relate to each other within the landscape?

Guo Xi (ca. 1020-1090), Early Spring, dated 1072

SOURCE: Guo Xi (ca. 1020-1090), Early Spring, dated 1072 , in James Cahill, Ge jiang shan se - Hills Beyond A River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368, Taiwan edition (Taipei: Shitou gufen youxian gongsi, 1994), pl. 2.6, p. 71. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan.
Hanging scroll, ink and light colors on silk, 158.3 x 108.1 cm.

Guo Xi developed a strategy of depicting multiple perspectives called "the angle of totality." Because a painting is not a window, there is no need to imitate the mechanics of vision and view a scene from only one spot.

Like most Song landscapists, Guo Xi used texture strokes to build up credible, three-dimensional forms. Strokes particular to his style include those on "cloud- resembling" rocks, and the "devil's face texture stroke," which is seen in the somewhat pock-marked surface of the larger rock forms.

MORE: Early Spring is characterized by ease and surety of strokes, executed quickly and having a tensile quality and structure. There are seven to eight layers of ink in softer areas, and the tonal range throughout is subtle. Broad outlines of boulders merge with background, showing a preference for integration.
Guo Xi made his reputation on his landscapes and pictures of dried trees, which are recognizable for their "crab-claw" branches. He painted "tall pines, lofty trees, winding streams, craggy cliffs, deep gorges, high peaks, and mountain ranges, at times cut off by clouds and mist, sometimes hidden in haze, representing them with a thousand variations and ten thousand forms."

Guo Xi is known to have prepared large-scale paintings for the decoration of several halls at court. Nevertheless, appreciation of his work at court varied greatly over time; it was said that after his death, his painting style had so fallen out of favor that a visitor to the court found someone using his old paintings as rags.

Guo Xi's paintings often contained three types of trees. The lesser, bending trees Guo Xi described anthropomorphically as holding one's creeds within oneself; the crouching, gnarled trees were seen analogous to an individual clinging to his own virtues; and the vertical trees were compared to those individuals who remain abreast of their environmental conditions (politics) and flourish.

Besides vertical hanging scrolls like the paintings by Fan Kuan and Guo Xi above, landscapes were also done as long horizontal handscrolls, viewed a section at a time as the work was unrolled. Below is handscroll on silk by the late Northern Song painter, Wang Shen.

Do you see any similarities in style and composition in the painting below and the two above by Fan and Guo? What can one do better in each format? Why leave such a large space empty?

SOURCE: Fu Xinian, ed., Zhongguo meishu quanji, Huihua bian 3: Liang Song huihua, shang (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1988), pl. 34. Collection of the Shanghai Museum.