"The benevolent leshan, the wise enjoy the water". Since ancient times, Chinese Su Ai has integrated spiritual and emotional expressions into the landscape.
Chinese landscape painting, formed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, is at least more than 1,000 years earlier than Western landscape painting, but Chinese landscape painting is extremely rare. The earliest Chinese landscape painting that can be seen today is The Sui Dynasty Zhan Ziqian's "You Chun Tu".
"You Chun Tu" Sui Zhan Zi Qian Tang Dynasty Facsimile (Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing)
What exactly did Chinese landscape painting look like in its infancy? People can only see a brief written record in Zhang Yanyuan's "Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties": "People are greater than mountains, water is not allowed to flood, and trees are like outstretched arms." The actual object can only be appreciated from the Eastern Jin Dynasty painter Gu Kaizhi's "Roselle Futu".
"Not only are the early ones invisible, but even the Tang Dynasty is extremely rare, and the Tang Dynasty is the first climax of the development of Chinese landscape painting." Zhao Shengliang said, "But in Dunhuang, we see a very rich landscape painting from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, from which you can clearly see a vein of the development of Chinese landscape painting." ”
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, social unrest, many literati and scholars returned to the landscape, from which landscape poetry and landscape painting were born.
This period was also the beginning of the opening of the Mogao Caves. Because a large number of Bunsen stories and jingchang stories are told in the background between the mountains and forests and fields, Dunhuang painters have also painted the next picture of green mountains and green waters in the desert hinterland where there are no green mountains and green waters.
Comparing the Han Dynasty portrait bricks unearthed in Henan with the hunting map of Cave 249 of the Western Wei Dynasty, it is quite similar. This is the early feature of Chinese landscape painting, the composition style inherits the expression of the Han Dynasty, the mountains are flat, and the people are greater than the mountains.
Han Dynasty portrait bricks unearthed in Henan
Mogao Cave Cave 249 Hunting Figure Western Wei
They are sometimes arranged diagonally as a background to the story.
Sometimes crossed at the right time to split the number of story scenes.
And sometimes one and one piled up to show the mountain is tall. Those colorful mountains painted red, white, blue and green are full of simple and innocent decorative meanings, which are interesting to themselves.
Then he entered the Sui Dynasty, which inherited the history of Chinese landscape painting. At this time, the landscape of the Dunhuang murals got rid of the early clumsiness and began to move towards realism, and the use of techniques such as near and far space, the level of objects and images, and the color blending and dyeing became more and more abundant, which contained a strong thrust for the climax of Tang Dynasty landscape painting.
Mogao Caves Cave 209 Landscape Early Tang Dynasty
After entering the Tang Dynasty, large-scale warp paintings began to be popular in the Dunhuang Grottoes, and the proportion and space of landscape paintings became larger and larger, and some of the background of the story was a landscape painting with skilled techniques and pleasing to the eye. Whether it is perspective relationships, composition methods or blending techniques, they have reached an unprecedented height.
Entering cave 323 of the early Tang Dynasty, the story of Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions was staged under the curtain of vast landscapes. Although this curtain has lost its color for a long time, the color-giving method of line drawing and color rendering in that era and the composition method of thousands of miles are still visible.
Cave 323 of Mogao Caves Zhang Qian sent an envoy to the Western Regions of the Early Tang Dynasty
Zhao Shengliang once summed up several types of compositions of the landscape paintings of the Tang Dynasty period of Dunhuang murals: one is a pyramid-shaped composition; the other is a composition of left and right contrast, with mountains on both sides and a river in the middle.
"Why do you want to paint like this?" Zhao Shengliang said, "Because the river in the middle bends and stretches out into the distance, it forms a certain depth." This is often used by Tang Dynasty painters, which is what we call the sense of perspective, from far to near. Song Dynasty painters summarized chinese landscape techniques as the 'Three Distant Methods' of Lofty, Far-reaching, and Pingyuan. In fact, this 'three-far method' has been completed as early as the Tang Dynasty, such as Cave 103, Cave 148, Cave 172 and so on. You look at it, it's remarkable, its landscape expression technique is very rich. So if you want to study the landscape paintings of the Tang Dynasty or before the Tang Dynasty in China, I think the Dunhuang murals are the most reliable basis, because the Dunhuang murals (above) see the actual objects. ”
Mogao Caves Cave 103 Mountain Travel Sheng Tang
The Tang Dynasty was destined to be an era of miracles everywhere, and its extraordinary creative ability was always innovating. Landscape painting is no exception.
The epoch-making green landscape painting in the history of Chinese painting was created by Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao's father and son in the Tang Dynasty.
"Ming Emperor Xingshu Tu" Tang Li Zhaodao (Collection of national palace museum in Taipei)
Green landscape is a painting technique specially named after color, mainly using mineral pigments Shi Qing and Shi Green to express the hills and valleys, showing the landscape artistic conception pursued by the Tang People, deep and long without losing its magnificence.
Regarding green landscapes, there is no shortage of records in many documents on the history of painting. However, the green landscape works of Tang Dynasty painters have not been handed down, which makes it inevitable that future generations will have a wrong understanding of the real green landscape painting.
Fortunately, at that time, this technique swept the country, and naturally spread to Dunhuang, where it was truly preserved on the Dunhuang murals.
The landscape painting in the southern wall of Cave 217 of the Sheng Tang Dynasty can be called an outstanding green landscape map. Different figures marching through the mountains, arbitrarily intercepting one of the parts, can make a separate landscape painting.
Mogao Caves Cave 217 Landscape Painting Sheng Tang Dynasty
The mountains are verdant, the flowers and trees are covered, the rivers are meandering, especially the small trees with peach blossoms dotted among them, making the picture vivid and vivid, which can be called a classic landscape work of Dunhuang painters.
Stone blue and stone green are mineral pigments, whether it is evenly spread and dyed, or the transition from dark to shallow, it is very difficult. But dunhuang painters used it to a miraculous effect, both prosperous and beautiful, but also implicit.
Professor Chang Shana said: "In the Tang Dynasty, Shi Qing and Shi Green were engaged in 'halo removal', and the so-called halo was that whether it was on flowers, patterns, or landscaping, it became three colors. For example, shiqing has become light stone blue, medium stone blue, deep stone blue, light stone blue outside the hook line is white, deep stone blue outer hook line is black, which gives people a feeling more luxurious, more plump. The layers of the murals are also very rich, and the leaves, flowers, figures, and patterns of the paintings have been faded, and there is no fading in the early days. ”
During the Middle and Tang Dynasties, the popular screen painting in the Central Plains also affected the Dunhuang murals at the same time, and screen paintings began to appear in the Buddha shrine and the four walls of the main room.
In this way, the landscape painting method on the Dunhuang murals has always echoed with the painting method of the Central Plains and is in the same vein.
The 3rd Cave of Yulin Cave Puxian has become a typical Song Dynasty landscape painting in Western Xia
The five dynasties to the Northern Song Dynasty were the turning point of Chinese landscape painting to ink painting. The style of landscape painting on the walls of the Mogao Caves also changed.
Wutai Mountain, known as the giant landscape figure painting in the Dunhuang murals, is located in Cave 61, and after the Tang Dynasty's vigorous performance of heavy ink and color, the picture on the cave wall became more and more light, and began to merge with the Central Plains ink painting.
Mogao Caves Cave 61 Wutai Mountain Map (Partial)
The green landscape paintings that once led Chinese painting also gradually declined in the nearly thousand years after the Song Dynasty, and eventually disappeared from Chinese painting.
The painter who once again made the green landscape famous was Zhang Daqian.
The experience of copying the Dunhuang wall for nearly two years has profoundly influenced Zhang Daqian's creation, and he once admitted that the biggest gain he got from the Dunhuang murals was to learn the color techniques and modeling methods of the ancients. He injected new vitality into the art of green landscapes.
Zhao Shengliang said: "Color is a very important factor in Chinese painting. But we gradually lost this tradition. Zhang Daqian saw it, he saw the rich colors of the paintings of the Tang Dynasty. Finally, in his landscape paintings, he comprehensively used the color techniques of the Tang Dynasty. When we see his landscape paintings, (using) big green, so strong colors, in fact, he understands Dunhuang art from a spiritual sense. ”
Source: Dunhuang Bookstore, excerpt from Qin Chuan and An Qiu, "Dunhuang Painting School"