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,
