Skilfully treading the line between realistic and idealistic depiction, the painting Sparrows Fighting features two small birds wrestling playfully. While the wings and tail are rough ink sketches, and its feathers and underbelly are depicted with light color washes, the claw, beak and eyes are detailed portrayals of strength and vitality. One bird is about to peck, while the other has their talons tightly clasped, locking both in a stalemate captured in time.
The Life
Between
Brushstrokes
Through studying nature, Song artists developed a sophisticated blueprint to express the very essence of life.
During the Song Dynasty, landscape paintings rose to become one of the most important artistic genres of the era. For Song artists, the observation of nature was not just an artistic pursuit but also a form of introspection. The question then, explains Professor Qiu Ting, Vice President of the School of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, was how to express natural creation.
To address these concerns in landscape painting, brush techniques evolved to express the appearance of natural landforms which were constantly changing due to geography, time, or shifting historical circumstances throughout the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties.
“Man and nature is an eternal topic in art. It is through the combination of landscape painting philosophies and brushwork initiated by Song artists that we have an elegant blueprint to express the vitality of nature.”
Professor Qiu Ting
Vice President—School of Chinese Painting
and Calligraphy, Central Academy of Fine Arts
Textures of Reality
The growth of landscape as subject matter during the Northern Song Dynasty, explains Professor Qiu, led to the development of textural brushstrokes used to realize the quality, texture, and lighting for the “enrichment of the natural scene as a whole.”
Also known as ‘cun’, these textural ‘wrinkling’ brushstrokes used to depict mountains, rocks, and plants help the landscape come alive, and include techniques like the ‘axe-cut’ and ‘crab-claw’ strokes, as well as dotting methods such as the ‘raindrop’ stroke popularized by Fan Kuan.
Painted during the Northern Song Dynasty, Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams is a representative masterpiece showcasing the magnificence of landscapes found in Northern China, depicting the austere peaks of Qinling and Longshan, where the artist found his spiritual retreat. Within the simple composition of a mountain seen front-on, a tiny mule train is visible in the foreground, whilst the dominating main mountain seemingly towers from above, highlighting the dramatic scale of landform in comparison to man. The painting is replete with textural strokes, rocks outlined with contouring, jagged lines, and the weathered rocky topography and gritty earth portrayed through shorter, ‘raindrop’ brushstrokes dotted on silk.
“The detailed and condensed cun strokes gives the picture a sense that it has been frozen in time.”
Professor Qiu Ting
Vice President—School of Chinese Painting
and Calligraphy, Central Academy of Fine Arts
“[The artist’s peer] Mi Fu also described the painting, saying ‘The mountains and rivers are deep and empty, and the water seems to have a sound.’"
As the Southern Song Dynasty was defined by a loss of its northern territory, artists during this time focused on brushwork designed for refined, personal lyrical expression. This shift, explains Professor Qiu, resulted in more complex textural strokes such as the ‘horse-tooth’, ‘scraped iron’, or ‘nailhead’ strokes.
For instance, Southern Song artist Li Song’s West Lake depicts the broad, hazy expanse of this key cultural center at Lin’an (present-day Hangzhou), the Southern Dynasty’s re-established capital. Drawn with a bird's eye view, the painting depicts landmarks that still exist in today’s Hangzhou, like the Su Causeway and Leifeng Pagoda. With a mixture of lively brushstrokes overlapping each other and using masterful control of ink and brush pressure, the artist achieves a vibrant scene from the densely populated areas to misty mountains in the distance.
Water in particular was a natural feature that received special attention during this time, exemplified in Ma Yuan’s masterpiece Water Studies which uses varying techniques to depict 12 different bodies of water such as rivers, lakes, and seas. Professor Qiu notes that this work succinctly “summarizes the different characteristics and relationship between water forms and real objects,” further serving as a symbol of the era's nuanced understanding of the natural world.
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Drawing Atmosphere
Textural brushstrokes were also used to render intangible qualities that contribute to a scene’s overall atmosphere.
To capture this spirit of brush and ink, artists paid special attention to the portrayal of natural phenomena. Professor Qiu references the 12th century painting resource ‘The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings’ and explains: “Landscapes, rivers and lakes, wind and rain, valleys, peaks and mountains, forest and mist, rocks and ravines, and riverbanks and the endless shore, are all painted for the viewer to understand as if they are actually looking at the physical scene in front of them."
Mi Youren’s lyrical Cloudy Mountains demonstrates the beauty and mastery of painting misty water vapor in a way that is distinct from other Northern Song styles. His method of applying wet ink dots, called Mi-family dots, was referred to by scholar-artists as “ink play”. This technique closely infuses each brushstroke with psychological expression, lending thoughtfulness to even the minutest detail, elevating the status of the painting to that of poetry and calligraphy.
Another Northern Song work, Zhao Lingrang’s Whiling Away the Summer by a Lakeside Retreat showcases a lakeside scene in early summer, rendered in such paradisiacal sentimentality and beauty that it is considered one of the artist’s most representative works. A diverse range of weather changes is depicted throughout the scroll, such as the wind in the weeping willows, clouds and morning mist along the village paths, and lotus leaves represented as dotted brush strokes lingering along the pond’s banks.
Through the careful use of light ink washes, even an imaginary scene can be rich and full of vitality. Dreamed Journey over the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, for instance, depicts an imagined mountain scene of Xiaoxiang in Hunan. This commissioned painting was created for a 12th century Chan Buddhist monk Yungu Yuanzhou who had loved to travel, but was unable to do so in his old age. The artist skillfully depicts the humidity of the air and the soft light reflected from the haze using light tonal washes and varying degrees of pressure and ink. Fishing boats, foliage, and wild geese, on the other hand, are painted with especially thin brushstrokes, adding credibility to the detailed scene and evoking an ethereal mood.
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The Vitality of Life
Beyond awe-inspiring landforms depicted in realistic detail or lyrical sentimentality, Song artists mastered brushstrokes that capture lively animals caught in a split second of movement, thus bringing these subjects to life.
Similarly, Falling Flowers and Swimming Fish captures a dynamic scene of fish splashing in the water in a single split-second moment. The schools of fish along the scroll swim in a naturally lifelike way, painted in full rendered detail and at times using ‘boneless’, outline-free technique to emphasize realism. Aquatic plants and blooms falling from above sway in the water with true-to-life credibility.
Another example of the power of fine brushwork is in Monkey, attributed to Mao Song.
From tracing vernacular stories to documenting key moments in court life; daily whimsies to the most sublime of philosophical thoughts, the breadth of Song-era paintings in today’s collections reveal much about this early sophisticated Chinese society’s wealth of appreciation for the natural world around them. Explore more cultural facets in detail in the art series: The Song, Painted.
The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed are solely their own.
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