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Climate

In China, a vast land spanning many degrees of latitude with complicated terrain, climate varies radically. China has a variety of temperature and rainfall zones, including continental monsoon areas. In winter most areas become cold and dry, in summer hot and rainy. In Xinjiang Province, people have the saying, "we wear a leather coat in the morning and gauze at noon; eat watermelon around a fire."

Temperature Zones

Temperatures vary a great deal. Influenced by latitude and monsoon activities, in winter, an isotherm of zero degrees traverses the Huaihe River-Qinling Mountain-southeast Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Areas north of the isotherm have temperatures below zero degrees and south of it, above zero. Mohe Town in Heilongjiang Province can hit an average of 30 degrees centigrade below zero, while temperature in Hainan Province is above 20 degrees.

In summer, most of areas are above 20 centigrade, despite the high Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and other mountains such as Tianshan. Among these hot places, Turpan Basin in Xinjiang is the center for intense heat at 32 centigrade on average. There are also the famous 'Three Ovens' cities along the Yangtze River in summer: Chongqing, Wuhan, and Nanjing.

From north to south, there are five temperature zones and a plateau-climate zone: one cold-temperate zone, mid-temperate zone, warm-temperate zone, subtropical zone, tropical zone and a plateau climate zone.

Distributions are as follows:

Cold-temperate zone: north part of Heilongjiang Province and Inner Mongolia

Mid-temperate zone: Jilin, northern Xinjiang, and most of Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia

Warm-temperate zone: area of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Hebei Province.

Subtropical zone: South of isotherm of Qinling Mountain-Huaihe River, east of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Tropical zone: Hainan province, southern Taiwan, Guangdong, and Yunnan Province

Plateau climate zone: Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Precipitation

Precipitation in China is basically regular each year. From the spatial angle, the distribution shows that the rainfall is increasing from southeast to northwest, because the eastern seashores are influenced more than inland areas by the summer monsoon. In the place with the most rainfall, Huoshaoliao in Taiwan, the average annual precipitation can reach over 6,000 mm!

The rainy seasons are mainly May to September. Thus rich rainfall sometimes creates floods and drought accounts for the dry air in winter. In some areas, especially in the dry northwest, changes in precipitation every year are greater than in the coastal area. This is caused by the advance and retreat of the irregular summer monsoon. Viewed spatially, South China, with its longer rainy season, has more rainfall than the North.

Based on precipitation, the area divides into four parts: wet area, semi-wet area, semi-dry area and dry area. The first two are distributed alongside the Qinling Mountain-Huaihe River division, the 800 mm annual precipitation line (isohyet), and are the dominant farming areas. The 400 mm annual isohyet lies along the Daxing'an Mountains-Great Wall-Gangdisi Mountains, and divides the semi-wet and semi-dry areas. The last two areas support a very small population. Their boundary, the 200 mm annual isohyet, is approximately via middle Inner Mongolia and the Helan and Qilian Mountains to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Monsoon

In summer, a southeast monsoon from the western Pacific Ocean and a southwest monsoon from the equatorial Indian Ocean blow onto the Chinese mainland. These monsoons are the main cause of rainfall.

Starting in April and May, the summer rainy season monsoons hit the southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan. In June, the rains blow northward, and South China gets more rainfall with the poetic name, plum-rain weather, since this is the moment when plums mellow. North China greets its rainy season in July and August, says farewell in September; gradually in October the summer monsoons retreat from Chinese land.

Eastern China experiences many climate changes, while the northwest area is a non-monsoon region.

We are the world's largest population. We descend from Yan Di and Huang Di , the two mythical kings or chieftains who had ruled the land 4,400 years ago. Among our 56 ethnic groups, the Han people stand out to make up 93.3% of the most recent census statistics.

Yan Di allied with Huang Di in order to regain his lost territory in lower Yellow River from Chi You, a leader of Jiuli, a people from south China. Their combined strength proved advantageous for both, and they formed a merger.

We further list three huang and five di among our proud and wise ancestral leaders. They are revered similar to prophets in the Middle Eastern religions. Three huang refer to Fu Xi , Nu Wa, Shen Nong (Yan Di) while five di refer to Huang Di, Zhuan Xiang, Di Ku, Tang Yao and Yu Shun.

Similar to Hebrew biblical accounts on tribal affairs, the Chinese minorities came from splinter groups formed after royal edicts that marked major events in history. Exiled leaders fathered the minor tribes. According to Shi Ji by Sima Qian, Gong Gong, Dou, San Miao and Gun offended Zhuan Yu and were exiled upon Shun's request to north, south, west and east respectively. Thus, Gong Gong became the ancestor of Di, Dou that of Man, San Miao that of Rong and Gun that of Yi.

The tempered Chinese national characteristics emerged after three subsequent dynasties: the Xia, the Shang, and the Zhou. The turmoil endured by people during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States led to a common desire for a unified country.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang ruled as the first emperor, with Han tribes forming the nucleus of a united China. But the name Han is associated with the Western Han Dynasty that came after the first emperor's reign.

Another unsettling period arrived with the Three Kingdoms, Western and Eastern Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties. The five hu people resettled in the Yellow River region. Then the Northern Wei reunified the territories to bring about peace. About this time the various minorities had tacitly acknowledged the dominance of Han people and their way of life. The Chinese nation had finally emerged.

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One of the many tourists' sights visited during my five days and four nights in Beijing is that of the Badaling Great Wall. Needless to say, this dream come true is the highlight of my tour because the Badaling Great Wall literally comes alive for me. In my humble opinion, climbing any section of the Great Wall is the only way that anyone can thoroughly enjoy the rich incarnate splendor this wall personifies. ---- The Uphill Journey by PRAISEHIMANYHOW

After crossing a short bridge with Chairman Mao's large portarit overhead, we came to a gate leading to the Forbidden City! I only got to see this place in the 1980's movie "The Last Emperor" --- Spring Festival in Beijing by DENNIS

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Beijing Must See Tips

Great Wall was famous in the world,and you know,it cross a few provinces,when you come to Beijing,maybe you know Badaling,Mutianyu,or Simatai Great Wall,but when you watched the Great Wall from TV,the pics all come from the section was named Jiankou! ----- Jiankou Great Wall

Badaling Great Wall is the most complete and well-preserved section of the Ming Dynasty. Just as a Chinese saying goes, "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man" ---Badaling Great Wall

919 Bus to Badaling Great Wall (part 2)

Tips for great wall travel

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Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By the late Tang dynasty, landscape painting had evolved into an independent genre that embodied the universal longing of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to commune with nature. Such images might also convey specific social, philosophical, or political convictions. As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, the concept of withdrawal into the natural world became a major thematic focus of poets and painters. Faced with the failure of the human order, learned men sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse.

During the early Song dynasty, visions of the natural hierarchy became metaphors for the well-regulated state. At the same time, images of the private retreat proliferated among a new class of scholar-officials. These men extolled the virtues of self-cultivation—often in response to political setbacks or career disappointments—and asserted their identity as literati through poetry, calligraphy, and a new style of painting that employed calligraphic brushwork for self-expressive ends. The monochrome images of old trees, bamboo, rocks, and retirement retreats created by these scholar-artists became emblems of their character and spirit.

Under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, when many educated Chinese were barred from government service, the model of the Song literati retreat evolved into a full-blown alternative culture as this disenfranchised elite transformed their estates into sites for literary gatherings and other cultural pursuits. These gatherings were frequently commemorated in paintings that, rather than presenting a realistic depiction of an actual place, conveyed the shared cultural ideals of a reclusive world through a symbolic shorthand in which a villa might be represented by a humble thatched hut. Because a man's studio or garden could be viewed as an extension of himself, paintings of such places often served to express the values of their owner.

The Yuan dynasty also witnessed the burgeoning of a second kind of cultivated landscape, the "mind landscape," which embodied both learned references to the styles of earlier masters and, through calligraphic brushwork, the inner spirit of the artist. Going beyond representation, scholar-artists imbued their paintings with personal feelings. By evoking select antique styles, they could also identify themselves with the values associated with the old masters. Painting was no longer about the description of the visible world; it became a means of conveying the inner landscape of the artist's heart and mind.

During the Ming dynasty, when native Chinese rule was restored, court artists produced conservative images that revived the Song metaphor for the state as a well-ordered imperial garden, while literati painters pursued self-expressive goals through the stylistic language of Yuan scholar-artists. Shen Zhou (1427–1509), the patriarch of the Wu school of painting centered in the cosmopolitan city of Suzhou, and his preeminent follower Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) exemplified Ming literati ideals. Both men chose to reside at home rather than follow official careers, devoting themselves to self-cultivation through a lifetime spent reinterpreting the styles of Yuan scholar-painters.

Morally charged images of reclusion remained a potent political symbol during the early years of the Manchu Qing dynasty, a period in which many Ming loyalists lived in self-enforced retirement. Often lacking access to important collections of old masters, loyalist artists drew inspiration from the natural beauty of the local scenery.

Images of nature have remained a potent source of inspiration for artists down to the present day. While the Chinese landscape has been transformed by millennia of human occupation, Chinese artistic expression has also been deeply imprinted with images of the natural world. Viewing Chinese landscape paintings, it is clear that Chinese depictions of nature are seldom mere representations of the external world. Rather, they are expressions of the mind and heart of the individual artists—cultivated landscapes that embody the culture and cultivation of their masters.

Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Citation for this page:

Department of Asian Art. "Landscape Painting in Chinese Art". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/clpg/hd_clpg.htm (October 2004)

More Information on www.metmuseum.org

Special Exhibitions (including upcoming, current, and past exhibitions)

Cultivated Landscapes: Reflections of Nature in Chinese Painting with Selections from the Collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill

Dreams of Yellow Mountain: Landscapes of Survival in Seventeenth-Century China

A Millennium of Chinese Painting: Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection

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Asian Art: Features & Exhibitions; Collection; Online Resources (links); Books in the Met Store

After 300 years of division and fragmentation following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 A.D., China was once again unified under the Sui dynasty (581–618). The political and governmental institutions established during this brief period lay the foundation for the growth and prosperity of the succeeding Tang dynasty. Marked by strong and benevolent rule, successful diplomatic relationships, economic expansion, and a cultural efflorescence of cosmopolitan style, Tang China emerged as one of the greatest empires in the medieval world. Merchants, clerics, and envoys from India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Korea, and Japan thronged the streets of Chang'an, the capital, and foreign tongues were a common part of daily life.

In the beginning decades of the Tang, especially under the leadership of Emperor Taizong (r. 627–50), China subdued its nomadic neighbors from the north and northwest, securing peace and safety on overland trade routes reaching as far as Syria and Rome. The seventh century was a time of momentous social change; the official examination system enabled educated men without family connections to serve as government officials. This new social elite gradually replaced the old aristocracy, and the recruitment of gentlemen from the south contributed to the cultural amalgamation that had already begun in the sixth century.

The eighth century heralded the second important epoch in Tang history, achieved largely during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–56), called minghuang—the Brilliant Monarch. It is rightfully ranked as the classical period of Chinese art and literature, as it set the high standard to which later poets, painters, and sculptors aspired. The expressions and images contained in the poems of Li Bo (ca. 700–762) and Du Fu (722–770) reflect the flamboyant lives of the court and the conflicting sentiments generated by military campaigns. The vigorous brushwork of the court painter Wu Daozi (active ca. 710–60) and the naturalist idiom of the poet and painter Wang Wei (699–759) became artistic paradigms for later generations. Although the An Lushan rebellion in the middle of the century considerably weakened the power and authority of the court, the restored government ruled for another century and a half, providing stability for lasting cultural and artistic development.

In no other cultural tradition has nature played a more important role in the arts than in that of China. Since China's earliest dynastic period, real and imagined creatures of the earth—serpents, bovines, cicadas, and dragons—were endowed with special attributes, as revealed by their depiction on ritual bronze vessels. In the Chinese imagination, mountains were also imbued since ancient times with sacred power as manifestations of nature's vital energy (qi). They not only attracted the rain clouds that watered the farmer's crops, they also concealed medicinal herbs, magical fruits, and alchemical minerals that held the promise of longevity. Mountains pierced by caves and grottoes were viewed as gateways to other realms—"cave heavens" (dongtian) leading to Daoist paradises where aging is arrested and inhabitants live in harmony.

From the early centuries of the Common Era, men wandered in the mountains not only in quest of immortality but to purify the spirit and find renewal. Daoist and Buddhist holy men gravitated to sacred mountains to build meditation huts and establish temples. They were followed by pilgrims, travelers, and sightseers: poets who celebrated nature's beauty, city dwellers who built country estates to escape the dust and pestilence of crowded urban centers, and, during periods of political turmoil, officials and courtiers who retreated to the mountains as places of refuge.

Early Chinese philosophical and historical texts contain sophisticated conceptions of the nature of the cosmos. These ideas predate the formal development of the native belief systems of Daoism and Confucianism, and, as part of the foundation of Chinese culture, they were incorporated into the fundamental tenets of these two philosophies. Similarly, these ideas strongly influenced Buddhism when it arrived in China around the first century A.D. Therefore, the ideas about nature described below, as well as their manifestation in Chinese gardens, are consistent with all three belief systems.

The natural world has long been conceived in Chinese thought as a self-generating, complex arrangement of elements that are continuously changing and interacting. Uniting these disparate elements is the Dao, or the Way. Dao is the dominant principle by which all things exist, but it is not understood as a causal or governing force. Chinese philosophy tends to focus on the relationships between the various elements in nature rather than on what makes or controls them. According to Daoist beliefs, man is a crucial component of the natural world and is advised to follow the flow of nature's rhythms. Daoism also teaches that people should maintain a close relationship with nature for optimal moral and physical health.

Within this structure, each part of the universe is made up of complementary aspects known as yin and yang. Yin, which can be described as passive, dark, secretive, negative, weak, feminine, and cool, and yang, which is active, bright, revealed, positive, masculine, and hot, constantly interact and shift from one extreme to the other, giving rise to the rhythm of nature and unending change.

As early as the Han dynasty, mountains figured prominently in the arts. Han incense burners typically resemble mountain peaks, with perforations concealed amid the clefts to emit incense, like grottoes disgorging magical vapors. Han mirrors are often decorated with either a diagram of the cosmos featuring a large central boss that recalls Mount Kunlun, the mythical abode of the Queen Mother of the West and the axis of the cosmos, or an image of the Queen Mother of the West enthroned on a mountain. While they never lost their cosmic symbolism or association with paradises inhabited by numinous beings, mountains gradually became a more familiar part of the scenery in depictions of hunting parks, ritual processions, temples, palaces, and gardens. By the late Tang dynasty, landscape painting had evolved into an independent genre that embodied the universal longing of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to commune with nature. The prominence of landscape imagery in Chinese art has continued for more than a millennium and still inspires contemporary artists.

The Song dynasty (960–1279) was culturally the most brilliant era in later imperial Chinese history. A time of great social and economic change, the period in large measure shaped the intellectual and political climate of China down to the twentieth century. The first half of this era, when the capital was located at Bianliang (modern Kaifeng), is known as the Northern Song period.

The early Northern Song dynasty witnessed the flowering of one of the supreme artistic expressions of Chinese civilization: monumental landscape painting. Retreating to the mountains to escape the turmoil and destruction that occurred at the end of the Tang dynasty (618–906), tenth-century recluse-painters discovered in nature the moral order that they had found lacking in the human world. In their visionary landscapes, the great mountain, towering above the lesser mountains, trees, and men, was like "a ruler among his subjects, a master among servants." Later, Song court painters transformed these idealized images of nature into emblems of a perfectly ordered state.

An important outgrowth of Song political unification after the war-torn Five Dynasties period (907–60) was the creation of a distinctive style of court painting under the auspices of the Imperial Painting Academy. Painters from all parts of the empire were recruited to serve the needs of the court. Over time, the varied traditions represented by this diverse group of artists were welded together into a harmonious Song academic manner that valued a naturalistic, closely descriptive portrayal of the physical world. Under Emperor Huizong (r. 1101–25), himself an accomplished painter and calligrapher, imperial patronage and the ruler's direct involvement in establishing artistic direction reached a zenith. While maintaining that the fundamental purpose of painting was to be true to nature, Huizong sought to enrich its content through the inclusion of poetic resonance and references to antique styles.

The momentous political shift during the early Song—from a society ruled by a hereditary aristocratic order to a society governed by a central bureaucracy of scholar-officials chosen through the civil-service examination—also had a major impact on the arts. As a ruling elite, these Neo-Confucian scholars regarded public service as their principal calling, but factional strife sometimes forced them to retire from political engagement, during which time they often pursued artistic interests. Dissatisfied with the rigidity and oversophistication of early Northern Song calligraphy, eleventh-century scholars sought to revive the natural, spontaneous qualities of more archaic models. The literati also applied their new critical standards to painting. Rejecting the highly realistic descriptive style followed by the professional painters of the Imperial Painting Academy, they also departed from the official view that art must serve the state. Instead, the amateur scholar-artist pursued painting and calligraphy for his own amusement as a forum of personal expression.

Beginning about the fourth century B.C., ancient texts describe Chinese society as divided into four classes: the scholar elite, the landowners and farmers, the craftsmen and artisans, and the merchants and tradesmen. Under imperial rule, the scholar elite, whose exemplar was Confucius, directed the moral education of the people; the farmers produced food; the craftsmen made things that were useful; and the merchants promoted luxury goods. Because in theory the Confucian elite advocated simple rural values as opposed to a taste for luxury (which they viewed as superfluous, leading to moral degeneration), the merchants who sold for profit, adding nothing of value to society, ranked low on the social scale (though, in reality, economic success had its obvious advantages).

The unique position occupied by the scholar elite in Chinese society has led historians to view social and political change in China in light of the evolving status of the scholar. One theory holds that the virtues of the scholars were appreciated only in times of cultural upheaval, when their role was one of defending, however unsuccessfully, moral values rather than that of performing great tasks. Another theory, relating to art and political expression in Han-dynasty China, offers an analysis of the tastes and habits of the different social classes: "the imperial bureaucracy, not the marketplace, was [the scholar's] main avenue to success, and he was of use to that bureaucracy only insofar as he placed the public good above his own. … [Thus] the art of the Confucian scholar was … inherently duplicitous and was encouraged to be so by the paradoxical demands [that Chinese] society made upon its middlemen."

Beginning in the late tenth century, in the early Northern Song, the government bureaucracy was staffed entirely by scholar-officials chosen through a civil examination system. The highest degree, the jinshi ("presented scholar"), was awarded as the culmination of a three-stage process. The examinations produced 200 to 300 jinshi candidates each year. By the late eighteenth century, China's population had grown to about 300 million. The more than 1,200 counties, divided into eighteen provinces, were governed through an imperial bureaucracy of only 3,000 to 4,000 ranked degree-holding officials. The officials ruled the land with the help of local gentry and locally recruited government clerks. Because the governmental superstructure was so thinly spread, it was heavily invested in the Confucian virtue ethic as the binding social force—and when that failed, in the use of harsh punishment—for maintaining stability and order.

This system operated as a mechanism through which the state replaced entrenched local hereditary landowners and rich merchants with people whose authority was conferred (and could easily be removed) by the state. Scholar-officials, unlike the other three social classes, did not therefore constitute an economic class as such, as their only power resided in their Confucian ideals and their moral and ethical values. Nevertheless, the landowners, the craftsmen, and the merchants were controlled by the state and the state was administered by the scholar-officials, who discouraged entrepreneurial endeavor and the accumulation of wealth with the Confucian admonition that acceptance of limitations leads to happiness.

Government administration and culture were from the outset the two primary concerns of the scholar. Beginning in the late Northern Song, with the growth of literacy but with a fixed quota for civil examination candidates (and therefore limited opportunities for official employment), scholars increasingly turned to the arts, the study of which was considered a path to the cultivation of the moral self. Responding to both perceived and real moral deterioration, governmental corruption, and societal ills and subscribing to the belief that a return to the past, a turning back to the teachings of the ancients, would transform human society, the scholar-artists pursued the study of early calligraphy and painting. Private collections of ancient works were amassed, and scholarship in such fields as archaeology and epigraphy flourished. Scholar-officials also became particularly associated with the Four Accomplishments: painting, poetry, a chesslike game of strategy known as weiqi (go in Japanese), and playing the zither (qin). In the area of paintings, scholar-artists beginning in the Yuan dynasty developed and were closely associated with a highly expressive style of painting that utilized nonrepresentational calligraphic brushwork to create pictures, most typically landscapes, that revealed the inner spirit of the painter rather than a realistic depiction of the subject.

During the Yuan dynasty, China—for the first time in its long history—was completely subjugated by foreign conquerors and became part of a larger political entity, the vast Mongol empire. Ironically, during this century of alien occupation, Chinese culture not only survived but was reinvigorated.

Lacking experience in the administration of a complex empire, the Mongols gradually adopted Chinese political and cultural models. Ruling from their capital in Dadu (also known as Khanbalik; now Beijing), the Mongol Khans increasingly assumed the role of Chinese emperors. During the 1340s and 1350s, however, internal political cohesion disintegrated as growing factionalism at court, rampant corruption, and a succession of natural calamities led to rebellion and, finally, dynastic collapse.

In spite of the gradual assimilation of Yuan monarchs, the Mongol conquest imposed a harsh new political reality upon China. As a group, the literati were largely ignored by the Mongols; those few who did enter government service often received only minor appointments, either as teachers in local schools or as low-level clerks. Southern Chinese, having resisted the Mongol invasion the longest, faced a conscious policy of discrimination, leading many scholars to withdraw from public life to pursue their own personal and artistic cultivation, often under the aegis of the Buddhist or Daoist religions. Drawing on the scholar-official aesthetic of the late Northern Song, Yuan literati painters no longer took truth to nature as their goal but rather used painting as a vehicle for self-expression. In the hands of highly educated scholar-artists, brushwork became calligraphic and assumed an autonomy that transcended its function as a means of creating representational forms.

The early Ming dynasty was a period of cultural restoration and expansion. The reestablishment of an indigenous Chinese ruling house led to the imposition of court-dictated styles in the arts. Painters recruited by the Ming court were instructed to return to didactic and realistic representation, in emulation of the styles of the earlier Southern Song (1127–1279) Imperial Painting Academy. Large-scale landscapes, flower-and-bird compositions, and figural narratives were particularly favored as images that would glorify the new dynasty and convey its benevolence, virtue, and majesty.

In Ming painting, the traditions of both the Southern Song painting academy and the Yuan (1279–1368) scholar-artist were developed further. While the Zhe (Zhejiang Province) school of painters carried on the descriptive, ink-wash style of the Southern Song with great technical virtuosity, the Wu (Suzhou) school explored the expressive calligraphic styles of Yuan scholar-painters emphasizing restraint and self-cultivation. In Ming scholar-painting, as in calligraphy, each form is built up of a recognized set of brushstrokes, yet the execution of these forms is, each time, a unique personal performance. Valuing the presence of personality in a work over mere technical skill, the Ming scholar-painter aimed for mastery of performance rather than laborious craftsmanship.

Early Ming decorative arts inherited the richly eclectic legacy of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which included both regional Chinese traditions and foreign influences. For example, the fourteenth-century development of blue-and-white ware and cloisonné enamelware arose, at least in part, in response to lively trade with the Islamic world, and many Ming examples continued to reflect strong West Asian influences. A special court-based Bureau of Design ensured that a uniform standard of decoration was established for imperial production in ceramics, textiles, metalwork, and lacquer.

In 1125, when the Jurchen, a seminomadic people from northeast Asia, invaded Song China and captured the capital at Bianliang (modern Kaifeng), founding their own Jin dynasty in the north, the Song court reestablished itself in the south in Hangzhou, where it continued to rule for another 150 years as the Southern Song dynasty.

Southern Song society was characterized by the pursuit of a highly aestheticized way of life, and paintings of the period often focus on evanescent pleasures and the transience of beauty. Images evoke poetic ideas that appeal to the senses or capture the fleeting qualities of a moment in time. One particularly important source of inspiration for Southern Song artists was the natural beauty of Hangzhou and its environs, especially West Lake, a famed scenic spot ringed with lush mountains and dotted with palaces, private gardens, and Buddhist temples.

The Southern Song Imperial Painting Academy continued the stylistic direction and high technical standards established by Emperor Huizong in the early twelfth century. Often executed in the intimate oval fan or album-leaf format, academic paintings—and the imperially inscribed poems that sometimes accompany them—reveal an increasingly narrow, concentrated vision and a commitment to the exact rendering of an object. The cultivation of a tranquil and detached mind free of material entanglements was a common concern of Song Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200): the "investigation of things [leading to] the extension of knowledge."

The decorative arts also reached the height of elegance and technical perfection during the Southern Song. Like painting, the plastic arts responded to two different aesthetics—that of the imperial court and that of popular culture. Supreme among the decorative arts of the Song period are ceramics, which many connoisseurs consider the highest artistic achievement of the Chinese potter.

The Legacy of Genghis Khan

Inner Mongolia Museum, Hohhot

Cenotaph, Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), 14th century

China

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

Cup with fish-shaped handles (SAR-1613), late 13th–14th century

Golden Horde (Southern Russia)

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The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, London

Saddle arches and fittings (MTW 795), first half of 13th century

Mongol

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Genghis Khan (ca. 1162–1227) and the Mongols are invariably associated with terrible tales of conquest, destruction, and bloodshed. This famed clan leader and his immediate successors created the largest empire ever to exist, spanning the entire Asian continent from the Pacific Ocean to modern-day Hungary in Europe. Such an empire could not have been shaped without visionary leadership, superior organizational skills, the swiftest and most resilient cavalry ever known, an army of superb archers (the "devil's horsemen" in Western sources), the existence of politically weakened states across Asia, and, of course, havoc and devastation.

Yet, the legacy of Genghis Khan, his sons, and grandsons is also one of cultural development, artistic achievement, a courtly way of life, and an entire continent united under the so-called Pax Mongolica ("Mongolian Peace"). Few people realize that the Yuan dynasty in China (1279–1368) is part of Genghis Khan's legacy through its founder, his grandson Kublai Khan (r. 1260–95). The Mongol empire was at its largest two generations after Genghis Khan and was divided into four main branches, the Yuan (empire of the Great Khan) being the central and most important. The other Mongol states were the Chaghatay khanate in Central Asia (ca. 1227–1363), the Golden Horde in southern Russia extending into Europe (ca. 1227–1502), and the Ilkhanid dynasty in Greater Iran (1256–1353).

The Mongols were remarkably quick in transforming themselves from a purely nomadic tribal people into rulers of cities and states and in learning how to administer their vast empire. They readily adopted the system of administration of the conquered states, placing a handful of Mongols in the top positions but allowing former local officials to run everyday affairs. This clever system allowed them to control each city and province but also to be in touch with the population through their administrators. The seat of the Great Khanate in Dadu (Beijing) was the center of the empire, with all its pomp and ceremony, whereas the three semi-independent Central and western Asian domains of the Chaghatay, the Golden Horde, and the Ilkhanids were connected through an intricate network that crisscrossed the continent. Horses, once a reliable instrument of war and conquest, now made swift communication possible, carrying written messages through a relay system of stations. A letter sent by the emperor in Beijing and carried by an envoy wearing his paiza, or passport, could reach the Ilkhanid capital Tabriz, some 5,000 miles away, in about a month.

The political unification of Asia under the Mongols resulted in active trade and the transfer and resettlement of artists and craftsmen along the main routes. New influences were thus integrated with established local artistic traditions. By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Mongols had formed the largest contiguous empire in the world, uniting Chinese, Islamic, Iranian, Central Asian, and nomadic cultures within an overarching Mongol sensibility.

Genghis Khan's grandson Hülegü (died 1265) subdued Iran in 1256 and conquered Baghdad, the capital of the cAbbasid caliphate, in 1258. Hülegü's dynasty—the Ilkhanids, or Lesser Khans—ruled this area, called Greater Iran, until about 1353. After their rapid gain of power in the Muslim world, the Mongol Ilkhanids nominally reported to the Great Khan of the Yuan dynasty in China, and in the process imported Chinese models to better define their tastes. However, the new rulers were greatly impressed by the long-established traditions of Iran, with its prosperous urban centers and thriving economy, and they quickly assimilated the local culture. The Mongol influence on Iranian and Islamic culture gave birth to an extraordinary period in Islamic art that combined well-established traditions with the new visual language transmitted from eastern Asia.

Traditional Chinese Painting in the Twentieth Century

The first decades of the twentieth century marked the end of the insular, tradition-bound Qing empire (1644–1911) and the forceful entry of China into the modern age. Foreign influences, largely restricted to a handful of ports and missionary initiatives during much of the nineteenth century, now flooded into China in an irresistible tide. Indeed, the massive influx of Western ideas and products constituted the most important factor defining China's culture during the twentieth century.

China's defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) spurred a movement for reform among members of the scholarly class with the ideal of marrying "Chinese essential principles with Western practical knowledge." During its final years, the Qing dynasty did launch a number of initiatives aimed at modernization, but its efforts were too feeble and too late. Advocates for radical change, particularly the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), were able to capitalize upon growing dissatisfaction with Manchu rule to topple the Qing dynasty. The founding of the Republic of China in 1912 brought about an end to two millennia of imperial rule. During the next two decades, the young republic struggled to consolidate its power: initially by uniting central military and political leadership after the misguided attempt by Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), the first president, to establish himself as emperor; and second by bringing together China's diverse regions, after wresting control over certain areas from local warlords. In the arts, a schism developed between conservatives and innovators, between artists seeking to preserve their heritage in the face of rapid Westernization by following earlier precedents and those who advocated the reform of Chinese art through the adoption of foreign media and techniques.

As exemplified by Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) and Zhang Daqian (1899–1983), both of whom studied in Japan and traveled abroad late in their lives, some influential artists created hybrid styles that reflected a cosmopolitan attitude toward art and a willingness to modify inherited traditions through the incorporation of foreign idioms and techniques (1986.267.277; 1986.267.361). Zhang, who became a leading connoisseur and collector, based his diverse painting styles on the firsthand study of early masterpieces, while Fu, an academic, learned about earlier works from reproductions and copies.

With the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, cultural activities came under the control of the state. Seeking to reform traditional painting to make it "serve the people," the Communist government mandated that artists pursue a "revolutionary realism" that would celebrate the heroism of the common people or convey the majesty of the motherland. Taking the Socialist Realism of the Soviet Union as orthodoxy, Chinese painters found a model among their own countrymen—emulating the Western-derived academic realism of Xu Beihong (1895–1953). Painting from life rather than copying ancient masterpieces became the principal source of inspiration for most artists (1986.267.192). But excessive bureaucratic oversight and the shifting demands of politics often had a detrimental effect. The Communist party's effort to encourage plurality and free expression under the Hundred Flowers Movement of 1956–57, for example, was soon cut short by the antirightist purge of 1957; while the Great Leap Forward, of 1958–62, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, although intended to bring society into conformance with the party's progressive ideals, actually led to the persecution of many well-known artists and had a stultifying impact on creativity.

After 1949, Zhang lived for a time in Hong Kong and India before building residences in São Paolo, Carmel (in California), and Taiwan. His long residency outside China inevitably brought him into contact with currents of modern Western art, including Abstract Expressionism. This work, painted with intense mineral colors and broad washes of layered ink, may represent Zhang's response to such influences.

Zhang maintained that such works, which first appeared in 1956, when he was in Europe, derived from the "broken-ink" techniques of random splashing and soaking used by Tang dynasty (618–907) artists, but it seems more likely that his encounter with Western abstract art encouraged him to carry further the Japanese technique of splashed colors that he had used in earlier works. Clearly he welcomed the liberating effect of this painting mode on his creativity, which gave a spontaneity to his compositions. In spite of their abstract qualities, however, these paintings remained resolutely descriptive of the natural world. Here, Zhang first applied ink and color in a seemingly random manner, then added contour lines and other pictorial details in order to transform his composition into a highly suggestive vision of storm-engulfed mountains suddenly illuminated by a burst of sunlight that has turned the somber clouds iridescent.

The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911): Painting

Traditionalists|Loyalists and Individualists|Courtiers, Officials, and Professional Artists

In 1644, the Manchus, a semi-nomadic people from northeast of the Great Wall, conquered the crumbling Ming state and established their own Qing (or Pure) dynasty, which lasted nearly 300 years. During the first half of this period, the Manchus extended their rule over a vast empire that grew to encompass new territories in Central Asia, Tibet, and Siberia. The Manchus also established their hegemony over Chinese cultural traditions as an important means of demonstrating their legitimacy as Confucian-style rulers.

The brilliant reigns of the Kangxi (r. 1662–1722) and Qianlong (r. 1736–95) emperors display a period when the Manchus embraced Chinese cultural traditions and the court became a leading patron in the arts as China enjoyed an extended period of political stability and economic prosperity.

Three principal groups of artists were working during the Qing: the traditionalists, who sought to revitalize painting through the creative reinterpretation of past models; the individualists, who practiced a deeply personal form of art that often carried a strong message of political protest; and the courtiers, the officials, and the professional artists who served at the Manchu court.

The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911): The Traditionalists

Painting|Loyalists and Individualists|Courtiers, Officials, and Professional Artists

Defining a New Orthodoxy

While the early Manchu court favored a colorful figurative style, exemplified by the imposing image of Emperor Guan, a Chinese god whose martial prowess became a symbol of Manchu power, China's scholarly elite was deeply influenced by the theories and art of the late Ming artist, collector, and theorist Dong Qichang (1555–1636). Dong and his circle developed a revolutionary theory of literati painting based on a study of the old masters that became the foundation of a systematic stylistic reconstruction of landscape painting. Emphasizing the distinction between art and nature, Dong maintained: "If one considers the wonders of nature, then painting cannot rival landscape. But if one considers the wonders of brushwork, then landscape cannot equal painting."

During the early Qing period, this traditionalist theory became the foundation of a new orthodox style under the leadership of Dong's disciple, Wang Shimin (1592–1680). Wang was an accomplished amateur painter who built an important collection of old masters based on Dong's advice. It was this corpus of prime models that helped to define the orthodox lineage of scholar painting for Wang and his followers—later known collectively as the Orthodox School.

Wang Shimin and his friend Wang Jian (1598–1677) were the senior members of this school, but they were outshown by their brilliant pupil Wang Hui (1632–1717). Wang Hui made it his objective to integrate the descriptive landscape styles of the Song dynasty (960–1279) with the calligraphic brushwork of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) to achieve a "great synthesis." Wang Shimin's other preeminent disciple was his grandson, Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715)—the youngest of the so-called Four Wangs. Wang Yuanqi pursued a rigorously abstract style in the manner of Dong Qichang that could accommodate learned references to the past without sacrificing his own artistic identity. Two other important disciples of Wang Shimin were Wu Li (1632–1718) and Yun Shouping (1633–1690).

Coopting Orthodoxy: The Kangxi Emperor's Institutionalization of the Orthodox School

Coming to the throne at the age of six, the first task of the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722) was to consolidate control over the territories formerly governed by the vanquished Ming state and wrest power from his Manchu regents. He accomplished both objectives by shrewdly cultivating the support of the Chinese intellectual elite and by modeling his rule on that of a traditional Confucian monarch. Beginning in the 1670s, scholars from China's cultural heartland in the south were actively recruited into government service. These men brought with them a taste for the literati painting style practiced by members of the Orthodox School. A symbolic turning point in the legitimation of Kangxi's rule was his triumphal 1689 inspection tour of the south. On this tour, the emperor climbed Mount Tai, Confucianism's most sacred mountain, inspected water conservation projects along the Yellow River and Grand Canal, and visited all of the major cultural and commercial centers of the Chinese heartland, including China's cultural capital: Suzhou. Shortly after Kangxi's return to Beijing, his advisors initiated plans to commemorate this momentous event through a monumental series of paintings. Wang Hui, the most celebrated artist of the day, was summoned to Beijing to oversee the project. Kangxi further extended his manipulation of Chinese cultural symbols by enlisting Wang Yuanqi to advise him on the expansion of the imperial painting collection.

Fu Baoshi here imitates the archaic simplicity of a fourth-century painting style to impart an ethereal elegance to his depiction of a legendary goddess. However, the earlier style is transformed by Fu's modern sensibility. The naturalistic treatment of the nose, eyes, and wisps of hair across the forehead reflects Fu's training in Western-style life drawing. Indeed, his model may have been his wife, whom Fu is said to have portrayed often during the difficult war years in gratitude for her steadfast devotion. Fu inscribed the painting again in 1950, just one year after the birth of the People's Republic and his return to Nanjing, where he took a post as a professor at Nanjing Teachers' College. In this second inscription, he dedicated the painting to the then French ambassador to China.

The subject, the Lady of the Xiang River, is taken from a cycle entitled the Nine Songs (Jiu ge), traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan, a minister to the king of Chu who remained loyal to his ruler through years of slander and exile. The Xiang River, a major tributary of the Yangzi that ran through the state of Chu, was known to harbor a goddess in its depths. She surfaced and enchanted the poet, who swore to make her his bride. The moment of enchantment depicted by the artist is described by the poet thus:

The Child of God, descending the northern bank,

Turns on me her eyes that are dark with longing.

Gently the wind of autumn whispers;

On the waves of Dongting Lake the leaves are falling.

(translation from David Hawkes, Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985])

The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911): The Courtiers, Officials, and Professional Artists

Painting|Traditionalists|Loyalists and Individualists

Two Ming Princes

Two of the most outstanding artists of the early Qing period were descendants of the Ming royal house: Zhu Da (1626–1705) and Zhu Ruoji (1642–1707), both of whom became better known by their assumed names, Bada Shanren and Shitao.

A scion of the Ming imperial family from a branch enfeoffed in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, Zhu Da became a "crazy" Buddhist monk, shamming deafness and madness in order to escape persecution after the fall of the Ming dynasty. Lodging his feelings of frustration and vulnerability in his art, he created a deeply personal expressionist style that reflects his ambivalence about his life in hiding and his failure to acknowledge his identity as a Ming prince.

Shitao was only two years old when the Ming dynasty fell. Saved by a loyal retainer, he was given sanctuary and anonymity in the Buddhist priesthood. In the late 1660s and 1670s, while living in seclusion in temples around Xuancheng, Anhui Province, he trained himself to paint. After many years of wandering from place to place in the south and spending nearly three years in Beijing, Shitao moved to the commercial center of Yangzhou around 1695, where he renounced his status as a Buddhist monk and supported himself through his painting. Drawing upon his love for natural scenery and his technical facility with brush and ink, Shitao created the most original landscape style of the seventeenth century.

Commercialism in Art: Yangzhou

The city of Yangzhou, located along the Grand Canal between the Huai salt fields and the Yangzi River, became a prosperous commercial hub during the Qing dynasty thanks to the salt monopoly centered there. During the eighteenth century, the city surpassed even Suzhou in the number of important artists active there, as the burgeoning fortunes of salt merchants and other entrepreneurs created opportunities for artistic experimentation as well as conspicuous consumption.

Yangzhou's mercantile elite supported a diverse array of artists who worked in two distinct pictorial traditions. One group, exemplified by Yuan Jiang (active ca. 1690–ca. 1746) and members of his atelier, worked in the courtly tradition, producing large-scale, richly detailed works in mineral pigments on silk that epitomize the Yangzhou taste for ostentatious display. Another group of artists, later known as the "Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou," drew inspiration from the highly individualistic works of Shitao. Practicing a self-expressive, calligraphic painting manner, these artists specialized in figural subjects or auspicious flower and bird images that appealed to the tastes of a broader public and were less demanding as well as more commercially viable than landscape painting.

Imperial Patronage under the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–95)

Under the Qianlong emperor, the Manchu empire reached its zenith. While the emperor's ambitious military campaigns in the far west extended Qing control over large portions of Tibet and Central Asia, the Chinese heartland enjoyed an extended era of peace and prosperity as the population doubled, farmlands expanded, and commerce flourished.

Court patronage also reached a high point in both refinement and output during this period. The finest craftsmen were recruited to serve in the palace workshops, including a number of European Jesuit missionaries whose representational techniques were particularly admired by the Qing emperors, who found them useful in the documentation of their appearance and deeds. Chinese court painters soon mastered the rudiments of Western linear perspective and chiaroscuro modeling, creating a new, hybrid form of painting that combined Western-style realism with traditional brushwork.

A key figure in establishing this new court aesthetic was the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), who lived in China from 1716 until his death in 1766 and who adopted the Chinese name Lang Shining. A master of vividly naturalistic draftsmanship and large-scale compositions, Castiglione worked with Chinese assistants to create a synthesis of European methods and traditional Chinese media and formats.

The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911): Loyalists and Individualists

Painting | Traditionalists | Courtiers, Officials, and Professional Artists

The Anhui Masters

According to the dictates of Confucian tradition, a man may not serve under two dynasties. As a result, many Ming officials and loyal subjects withdrew from public service after the fall of the Ming dynasty and lived in enforced retirement, pursuing personal and artistic self-cultivation. Escaping the chaos of the Manchu conquest, many of these artists found sanctuary outside traditional centers of culture. Lacking access to important collections of old masters, they drew inspiration from the natural beauty of the local scenery. One group of Ming loyalists living in Anhui Province, a prosperous region known for its outstanding paper and ink, saw in the rugged cliffs and craggy pines of Mount Huang (Yellow Mountain) a world free from the taint of Manchu occupation. Inspired by the Yuan-dynasty recluse-painter Ni Zan (1306–1374), who was known for his lofty moral character, these artists emulated Ni's minimalist compositions and "dry-brush" painting style, features that became hallmarks of the so-called Anhui School.

The Nanjing Masters

Nanjing, the Ming dynasty's secondary capital, remained a haven for loyalists during the early Qing. A center of Jesuit missionary activity since the late sixteenth century—it was once the home of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610)—Nanjing was also one of the first places where Chinese painters began to incorporate Western ideas of shading and perspective in their depictions of local scenery.

The most innovative Nanjing master was Gong Xian (ca. 1618–1689), who practiced a densely textured, monumental landscape style in which he was able to suggest volume and mass by varying the density and darkness of his ink dots. This modeling technique is highly schematic, and there is no single light source as in Western painting, but Gong's interest in the effects of light and shade probably owes something to the influence of European engravings and paintings.

Zhang Feng (active ca. 1636–62), whose father died in 1631 while defending the Ming against early incursions by the Manchus, withdrew from society after the fall of the Ming and became associated with the Buddhist church. Zhang's paintings present images of reclusion in the pale, dry style of Ni Zan.

Among the more conservative masters working in Nanjing were Ye Xin (active ca. 1640–73) and Fan Qi (1616–after 1694), both of whom worked in an unusually precise and realistic style. Both specialized in small-scale gemlike paintings depicting the rural scenery around their native city. Sensitive and lyrical recorders of the familiar, these artists were also innovative experimenters with light, atmosphere, and color whose art reflects a creative response to Western influences recently introduced to China by the Jesuits.

Maxwell K. Hearn

Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Citation for this page:

Hearn, Maxwell K. "The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911): Loyalists and Individualists". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/qing_3/hd_qing_3.htm (October 2003)