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The T'ang Period

NOT until the T'ang period (618—907) did landscape painting evolve into a separate and major genre of Chinese painting. This age, in fact, was looked upon by later critics as a golden age, during which some of the greatest artistic figures were active. How much of this estimate was based upon actual knowledge of their works and how much is the characteristically Chinese veneration of all that is ancient and traditional is hard to tell, but even the famous Sung scholar Su Tung-po complained in 1085 that only one or two original scrolls by Wu Tao-tzu could be found. Today the situation is even worse, and it is doubtful if there is more than one true T'ang landscape in existence. This state of affairs is very similar to that in Greek art, where we have numerous literary references to the famous sculptors of the Golden Age but few if any originals which can be attributed to them with certainty, since all the surviving works are either Roman copies or minor works by anonymous artists.

The first of the four great artistic figures who dominated this period was Li Ssu-hsün, known as General Li, who was probably born around 650 and died in 716. His fame was no doubt due just as much to his high social position and official rank as to his artistic accomplishments, for he was a descendant of the founder of the T'ang dynasty. Critics such as the celebrated Sung painter Mi Fei and the Ming scholar Tung Ch'i-ch'ang considered his work rather dry and poor, and his painting was no doubt somewhat academic, belonging to that tradition which emphasized meticulous detail and bright colors, a style referred to by the Chinese as hung pi. He was, however, greatly admired by the T'ang critics as, for example, the ninth-century scholar Chu Ching-hsüan, who, in The Famous Painters of the T'ang Dynasty, written in 840, refers to his style as lofty and original and says that his landscapes were supremely excellent,²¹ adding that the Emperor Ming Huang considered them the best of the period. According to these accounts, Li Ssu-hsün painted elaborate landscapes with palaces, pavilions, bridges, and terraces all brightly colored in blues and greens and reds and whites and done with a wealth of detail in a meticulous and refined manner. Unfortunately, none of his works have survived, and those connected with his name are at best very late reflections of his style.

If Li Ssu-hsün, at the end of the seventh century, had prepared the way for the florescence of Chinese landscape painting during the eighth, it was Wu Tao-tzu (ca. 680—760) who was the dominating artistic personality of this period. Again we are completely dependent upon literary evidence, because among the paintings and rubbings which today are associated with his name none are landscapes. His fame probably rested for the most part upon his Buddhist and figure paintings, but even here the few extant works ascribed to him are nothing but weak reflections of what his style must have been. According to tradition, his contribution to the development of landscape painting was considerable, and such a famous T'ang critic as Chang Yen-yuan, writing only a century after the death of the artist, said that he was one of the pioneers in the evolution of T'ang landscape painting. He wrote that, although the old manner gradually changed, the painters still shaped stones like dripping ice crystals and drew every fiber and carved every leaf of the trees. Of all of the artists only Wu Tao-tzu's brushwork was inspired by heaven, and Chang Yen-yuan says that Wu Tao-tzu, working in a new and more plastic style, often painted strange rocks and broken river banks on temple walls. He adds that, when Wu Tao-tzu went to Shu, he created landscapes which transformed the art of landscape painting.²² Today we have little to go on in trying to reconstruct the type of landscape Wu Tao-tzu painted, but since the Chinese critics always stress the boldness and power of his brush stroke, and a famous story told by the ninth-century critic Chu Ching-hsüan relates that he completed a panorama of over three hundred li in a single day, we may assume that it was a loose, free type of painting, a style very different from that of Li Ssu-hsün. Another story is that, when the emperor asked to see his sketches, Wu replied that he had none, for he had set them down in his heart. It is said that the Emperor Ming Huang also commissioned General Li to do a painting for the same building and that it took him several months to complete it. The emperor's comment was: "Li Ssu-hsün's achievement of many months, Wu Tao-tzu's of a single day... both are excellent in the extreme."²³ Although this story must be legendary, since Li was no longer alive at the time, it nevertheless illustrates the style of painting associated with these two artists during the T'ang period, when their works were no doubt readily available to the scholars and connoisseurs. Of course wall paintings such as these would deteriorate rapidly, and today we have no idea of what they looked like.

Although Li Ssu-hsün was dead at this time, his work was being carried on by his son, Li Chao-tao (ca. 670—730), who was a painter famous in his own right. Tradition has it that his works were very similar to those of his father, except that they lacked the elder Li's creative power and strength of brush stroke. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to compare their work, but it would seem likely that the younger Li, coming at a later time, would have shown a somewhat more advanced manner of painting landscapes. His works were apparently still quite numerous during the ninth century, and even today there are at least two paintings to which Li Chao-tao's name has become attached and which, even if not by his own hand, certainly reflect his style. The first, a small colored landscape painted on silk, which is in the Peking National Museum, represents travellers in a mountain landscape (Plate 5). This may well be an eighth-century original, for the closeness of its style to that of similar scenes painted on musical instruments in the Shōsō-in in Nara is striking. The manner of painting is extremely meticulous, and the many details are executed with sharply defined linear accents. The bright colors are typical of this type of T'ang painting, which is known as ch'ing lü shan shui, since the dominant colors are always blue and green, though in this painting there are greys and red as well.

The scene represented in the detail (Plate 6) shows a mountainous landscape with steep cliffs and valleys through which a group of men on horseback are travelling, accompanied by camels with heavy burdens. Decorative, picturesquely-shaped trees are scattered through the valley, while along the ridges and peaks groups of tiny trees are set like combs. Highly stylized clouds swirl around the mountain tops, sometimes isolating them like islands and sometimes hanging above the peaks in the distance. Riders emerge from the right background and move down towards the front to a bridge leading over a stream, while in the center some travellers are resting, others are unloading the beasts of burden, and unsaddled horses are lying beneath the trees. At the left, still another group is riding up a winding path, and tiny figures appear far above on the mountain. All this is shown with a wealth of minute and beautiful detail, but the painting lacks the kind of unity and grandeur which the great landscapes of the Sung period possess. It is also interesting to note that this is by no means a pure landscape in the Sung sense, for the figures, far from being subordinate to the majesty of nature, are still the center of interest, while the mountains are to a certain extent a setting for the travellers. Although a long step has been taken from the sixth century, when the figures were still completely dominant, this is not landscape painting for its own sake but rather a transitional work where the figures and the landscape coexist as equals.

Another painting that has been traditionally associated with Li Chao-tao because of a label which was later attached to it is a landscape scroll in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Plate 7). The subject, the Ch'iu Ch'êng Palace, a summer abode of the T'ang emperors, is typical of an age characterized by splendor and material wealth. It seems unlikely that this work was actually by Li Chao-tao himself, but it may well be by a Sung artist copying one of his designs or painting in his manner. The whole problem of attribution in Chinese painting is an extremely complex one, and even the most eminent connoisseurs will differ fundamentally over questions of attribution. The reason is that, not only did the Chinese throughout their history assiduously copy the old masters, often with remarkable skill, but when doing so they also copied the signature, seals, and colophons. Likewise, they painted in the manner of an old master, not with any intention of deceiving but rather to show their veneration for the great artist in whose style they were working. Finally, in modern times, there are copies which are outright forgeries of older paintings. These, which sometimes are of very good quality, include all the proper inscriptions and seals mentioned in the literature, so that it is often difficult to detect them, especially if the original has been lost or is not readily available for comparison. The result is that dozens of works may bear the name of a celebrated artist without there being much likelihood that a single one so inscribed is actually by the artist whose seal and signature appear on the painting. And since in the Sung period critics were already lamenting the fact that most of the T'ang works they saw were later copies, it is clear that we have at best more or less accurate later versions of the works of the great T'ang masters which may or may not give us a notion of what the work of a given artist was like.

The Boston painting, at least in its subject matter and execution, is undoubtedly close to the work of both the elder and the younger Li, for we are told that they often painted the splendid palaces of the age in an elaborate, brightly colored manner. Today these colors are unfortunately faded, but even so the red, blue, green, and grey still create a vivid effect. Here again, as in the Peking landscape, the world of nature is subordinate to man's activity, and the emphasis is placed not so much upon the trees and the mountains, beautifully as they are rendered, but upon the palace itself and the people. There is a multitude of descriptive detail, of doorways, courts, stairs, tiles, all drawn with exquisite care, so that the magnificence of the palace architecture may be fully appreciated. However, the more fluent and natural rendition of the willow trees in the foreground and the simple, rather abstract treatment of the mountain tops, combined with the greater awareness of space and atmosphere, suggest that this is the work of a later date, even if the general spirit is close to that of the T'ang period.

There is another painting often attributed to Li Chao-tao, one representing a similar subject—the Lo-yang Mansion—which, like the "Mountain Landscape with Travellers," is owned by the Chinese government and used to be in the Palace Museum in Peking.²⁴ The motif is close to the spirit of the T'ang period as well as to the kind of subject then popular, but the execution is very different from that which we would expect in a genuine T'ang painting. The brush strokes are hard and dry, the whole over-elaborate, suggesting a later copy made by a minor artist who may have seen an original but certainly did not have the talent to reproduce it. Furthermore, the rendering of the atmosphere, especially the mist covering the water and the mountains, proves conclusively that it is the work of a later age.

There are in the collection of the Peking Palace Museum two other paintings by an anonymous artist, one depicting Tu Fu's poem entitled Li Jen Hsing and the other called "Snowing in Shen Lin Garden,"²⁵ both of which in style and subject matter are close to the works discussed above. They are rather poor in quality but for that reason probably closer to the originals than they would have been if the artist who painted them had had a stronger artistic personality. They are no doubt Sung works, though they are done in a very archaic style which, with its elaborate treatment of the architecture and detailed rendition of the mountains, is quite in keeping with what we would expect from the T'ang period. Finally, there is a painting in the collection of Professor Ogawa in Kyoto which is traditionally attributed to Li Chao-tao,²⁶ a long narrative scroll showing a typical T'ang landscape with mountains, water, trees, and buildings, all painted in a careful style with gold outlines and colorful use of blue and green. However, the hard, uninspired quality of the brush strokes would suggest again a Sung or even a Ming copy rather than an original by Li Chao-tao himself.

The landscape painter who by later critics, especially the followers of the so-called Southern School, was regarded as the greatest of all T'ang landscapists was Wang Wei, who was born in 699 and died in 759. Equally celebrated as a poet, whose lyrics are still widely read today, he has been throughout the ages one of the most famous of all Chinese artists. For a long time he was believed to be the author of an essay on landscape painting which bears his name, but modern scholars no longer think that he could have written it since it anticipates ideas which were not current until a later time.²⁷ He started his life as a court official but later retired to his country place, Wang Ch'uan in Shensi, where he lived alone, practicing Buddhist meditation and painting both Buddhist and landscape scrolls. According to the ninth-century critic Chu Ching-hsüan:

His paintings of landscapes, or of pines and rocks, were drawn like those of Master Wu (Tao-tzu) but were outstanding for their taste and nobility.... He did a picture of the Wang River, in which mountains and valleys, dense-crowded, twisted in and out, while clouds and water streamed by. His mind was beyond world-contamination, so that marvels grew from his brush-tip....For his landscapes and his pines and rocks he too belongs in the wonderful class, top grade.²⁸

Although no originals have been preserved, there is today a stone engraving of a copy of the Wang Ch'uan scroll mentioned above which may give some indication of his style (Plate 8). Here again the quality of the copy is so poor that, in a literal sense, it is probably fairly close to the original. The rubbings extant today are made from a stone engraving by the Ming artist Kuo Shi-yuan, who in turn based his version upon a Sung copy which had been executed by Kuo Chung-shu.²⁹ Tradition has it that the original was also in monochrome, although other paintings by Wang Wei referred to in the art literature are described as being in color.³⁰ Thus, it seems likely that this scroll too had originally been painted in brilliant colors and that later critics, in order to have the master conform to their preconceived notions of what a work by the founder of the Southern School should have looked like, pretended that the Wang Ch'uan scroll had been painted in black and white. Certainly the difference between Wang Wei and his contemporaries was less great than the critics of the Ming period made it appear. In fact, a careful examination of these rubbings would suggest that the artist employed the same meticulous and detailed manner which was used by Li Chao-tao. The main difference, as far as one can see, is that Wang Wei emphasized the natural setting more and the buildings and figures less, suggesting that he was somewhat more advanced in the evolution of the pure landscape. The winding course of the river in the foreground, the towering mountain peaks with their many wrinkles, the variety of trees with their foliage making a pattern against the mountains, the tiny people, and in the center the equally tiny animals are all rendered with precise detail, and yet at the same time the artist achieves a far greater sense of unity in the design as a whole. Even more significant is the motif itself, that of the scholar's retreat amidst the beauty and solitude of nature, which is so close in spirit to the landscape painting of the Sung period. It may well be that Wang Wei's great influence on later artists can be explained by his new conception of landscape painting, rather than by any technical innovation. Certainly there can be little doubt that the profound cleavage between the so-called Northern School, which followed the meticulous and colorful manner of Li Ssu-hsün, and the Southern School, with its freer style supposedly following the ink washes of Wang Wei, was very largely the creation of Ming scholars like Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, for neither in the painting nor the criticism of the T'ang period is there much sign of this difference.

Another famous Wang Wei composition was entitled "Clearing after Snowfall in the Hills by the River," of which two copies have come down to us. One is in the collection of Mr. Lo Chên-yü in Tientsin, and the other is owned by Professor Ogawa in Kyoto.³¹ However, both of them are certainly no earlier than the Sung period, nor do they convey the spirit of the eighth century very convincingly. The subject is no doubt inspired by Wang Wei's celebrated painting and shows again what a great contribution the artist made towards the development of the landscape, for these are pure landscapes in which the figures no longer have an important place. At the same time, the execution cannot be faithful to the original, at least not if the scrolls were typical of Wang Wei, with the inspired brushwork traditionally associated with his name.

Many other works are either attributed to Wang Wei or are supposed to reflect his style, but most of them are not only poor in quality but have little similarity to anything which we associate with the period. Among these, the most convincing is a winter landscape, painted on silk with slight color, which is in the collection of the Freer Gallery (Plate 9). It is certainly a late copy, probably no earlier than the Ming period, but it seems to preserve the T'ang spirit pretty faithfully, especially in the lofty mountains, the gnarled trees, and the white snow. In fact, according to tradition, Wang Wei was particularly famous for his painting of snow-covered mountain tops, and many scrolls of this subject are still ascribed to him today.