year. There were morning or evening views, rainy or sunny scenes, tempestuous or tranquil ones, each represented in its own peculiar manner. As Kuo Hsi had said:
The spring mountain is wrapped in an unbroken stretch of dreamy haze and mist, and men are joyful; the summer mountain is rich with shady foliage, and men are peaceful; the autumn mountain is serene and calm, with leaves falling, and men are solemn; the winter mountain is heavy with storm clouds and withdrawn, and men are forlorn.
The sight of such pictured mountains arouses in men exactly corresponding moods. It is as if he were actually in those mountains. They exist as if they were real, not painted. The blue haze and white path arouse a longing to walk there; the sunset on a quiet stream arouses a longing to gaze upon it; the sight of hermits and ascetics arouses a longing to dwell with them; the rocks and streams arouse a longing to saunter among them ... the meaning of these pictures is wonderful.12
In painting these scenes the artist was not expected to give a life-like and detailed view, but rather a general impression which would convey to the onlooker a feeling of the scene as a whole. Too many intricacies would only interfere with his vision, for, as Kuo Hsi wrote: "When the artist succeeds in reproducing this general tone and not a group of disjointed forms, then clouds and atmosphere seem to come to life." Perhaps this ability to bring many details together into a unified and expressive whole, alive with the very spirit of nature, is the quality which distinguishes the great masters of Chinese painting from their many imitators and followers. These lesser men might be able, technically, to render every detail as the painter's manual had prescribed it, but they could not fuse these elements into a meaningful whole, and the result is an art both academic and eclectic, without any of the mysterious power which so pervades the masterpieces of Chinese painting. It is this that Hsieh Ho, the great fifth-century critic, had in mind when he made his first principle of painting the rendering of the "spirit-resonance and life-movement," or ch'i-yün sheng-tung in Chinese,13 a principle that lies at the very core of the Chinese conception of art. If the painter possessed this, he was, through inspiration, able to grasp the mysterious quality of nature, while if he lacked it, then the greatest technical virtuosity was as nothing. In a critic like Hsieh Ho, the dual nature of the Chinese mind is clearly revealed, and, as in Confucius and Lao-tzu, the rational and the emotional, the practical and the mystic both find expression. Thus Hsieh Ho in his six canons lists five which are basically technical. The second principle is the "bone manner," or structural use of the brush, while in the third he tells the artist to conform with the objects to obtain their likeness. The fourth says that the colors should be applied according to the species; the fifth deals with composition, which Siren has translated as "plan and design, place and position"; and the sixth says to transmit models by drawing.14 However, he begins with the first and most important, the ch'i-yün shêng-tung, which is as elusive and profound as the writings of Lao-tzu. Yet both are essential to Chinese art, and they must exist side by side, for in any really great work technique and inspiration are inseparably united. In the last analysis, even the greatest inspiration is worthless if the artist does not have the skill to give expression to it, and on the other hand, even the greatest technical ability is of little value when the artist lacks inspiration.
A unique feature of Chinese painting which distinguishes it from that of the West is its close relationship to calligraphy, a relationship that has certainly existed since Han times, that is, for at least two thousand years. The great artists of China were often as highly esteemed as calligraphers as they were as painters, and the skillful and artistic use of the brush played an essential role in the training of every person of education. Another difference between China and the West is that the Chinese artists were, more likely than not, gentlemen-painters rather than professionals, many being officials, statesmen, or even generals and emperors. This cultural ideal of the gentleman-painter, who is an amateur in the best sense of the word, is aptly described in the introduction to the catalogue of the collection of the most famous of all the gentlemen-painters, the Emperor Hui Tsung of the Sung dynasty, an artist of considerable talent who assembled one of the most magnificent collections of Chinese painting ever known. In the catalogue he says that the famous landscape painters from the T'ang to the Sung period were by and large not professionals but high officials and scholars who carried their vision of hills and valleys in their hearts, were in love with springs and stones, and had a great weakness for mists and clouds. He ends by saying that landscape paintings cannot be sold in the street, for they do not correspond to the taste of the common people.15
2
The Beginnings of Chinese Landscape Painting
THE earliest landscapes in Chinese art are found in the Han period (202 B.C.—220 A.D.) some two thousand years ago. At that time mountains, clouds, trees, and buildings first appeared in relief carvings, textile designs, mirror backs, and inlaid metal objects, but the elements of nature were rendered in a highly symbolic and abstract way. Although similar forms must also have appeared in the paintings of the period, no examples of such works have survived, and our knowledge, at best, is fragmentary. However, the evidence clearly suggests that nothing but the most stylized and primitive kind of landscape setting appeared in these early examples of landscape painting. The main elements were no doubt highly simplified, with very geometric trees and mountains rendered so abstractly that they would hardly have been recognizable. The reason for this was not so much a lack of skill on the part of the artists, since Han painters were in many ways highly competent, even sophisticated craftsmen; it was rather that they concentrated more on figure painting, devoting their major effort to the portrayal of scenes from myths, legends, history, and filial piety, and hence were little interested in landscape painting as such.
It was not until the following era, the Six Dynasties period (265—589), that landscape painting as such began. This development, according to Chinese tradition, is associated with one of the most celebrated of all Chinese artists, the great painter, calligrapher, and wit Ku K'ai-chih, who worked during the second half of the fourth century in the Southern capital at Nanking. Although he too regarded figure painting and portraiture as the most significant class of painting, he was nevertheless the first to accord landscape its proper place. A description of a real or imaginary landscape painted by Ku K'ai-chih has been preserved in an essay entitled Hua Yün-t'ai Shan Chi, or "How to Paint the Cloud-Terrace Mountain."16 How far this still was from naturalism is best seen by the fact that it was a Taoist landscape with peach trees of long life. In painting it, the artist said that he would make "purple rocks looking something like solid clouds, five or six of them astride the hill. And ascending between them there should be shapes that writhe and coil like dragons."17 Certainly the kind of landscape suggested in the essay must have been primitive in the extreme. The famous T'ang critic Chang Yen-yuan, writing in 847, five hundred years later, when presumably the originals by Ku K'ai-chih were still extant, says:
There are some famous pictures handed down from the Wei and Chin dynasties, and I have had occasion to see them. The landscapes are filled with crowded peaks, their effect is like that of filigree ornaments or horn combs. Sometimes the water does not seem to flow, sometimes the figures are larger than the mountains. The views are generally enclosed by trees and stones which stand in a circle on the ground. They look like rows of lifted arms with outspread fingers.18
No originals by Ku K'ai-chih have been preserved, but fortunately two excellent copies have survived. The first is the famous "Admonitions of the Imperial Preceptress" scroll, formerly in the imperial collection in Peking and now in the British Museum in London, which is believed to be a T'ang copy of a famous Ku K'ai-chih painting. One of the scenes shows a huntsman with a bow kneeling at the foot of a mountain and aiming at some birds in the distance.19 The relation between the figures and the mountain, both in relative size and in space, is wholly unnaturalistic, although the mountain itself, with its rising peaks, deep valleys, and dropping cliffs, is rendered very convincingly.
Another copy after Ku K'ai-chih, which is far better preserved and, although of later date, closer in style to what an original of the fourth century must have
