WChinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as guó huà, meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western styles of art which became popular in China in the 20th century. It is also called danqing. Traditional painting involves essentially the same techniques as calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black ink or coloured pigments; oils are not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular materials on which paintings are made are paper and silk. The finished work can be mounted on scrolls, such as hanging scrolls or handscrolls. Traditional painting can also be done on album sheets, walls, lacquerware, folding screens, and other media.
WWorks of bamboo painting, usually in ink, are a recognized motif or subgenre of East Asian painting. In a work of bamboo painting in ink, a skilled artist and calligrapher will paint a bamboo stalk or group of stalks with leaves. The contrast between the foreground and background, and between the varying textures represented by the stalks and the leaves, gave scope to the painter to demonstrate his or her mastery with an inkpot and a brush.
WChang Dai-chien or Zhang Daqian was one of the best-known and most prodigious Chinese artists of the twentieth century. Originally known as a guohua (traditionalist) painter, by the 1960s he was also renowned as a modern impressionist and expressionist painter. In addition, he is regarded as one of the most gifted master forgers of the twentieth century.
WThe Piling School was a genre of Chinese painting, named for its place of origin, now Changzhou in Jiangsu province. The style was influenced by contact with Japan, and examples are found almost exclusively in Japan and particularly in collections associated with the great Japanese Buddhist monasteries.
WDafen is a suburb of Buji, Longgang, Shenzhen in Guangdong province, China. The area is an artist village for the production of replicas of masterworks and outsourcing of original art creation.
WA folding screen is a type of free-standing furniture consisting of several frames or panels, which are often connected by hinges or by other means. They have practical and decorative uses, and can be made in a variety of designs with different kinds of materials. Folding screens originated from ancient China, eventually spreading to the rest of East Asia, and were popular amongst Europeans.
WGongbi is a careful realist technique in Chinese painting, the opposite of the interpretive and freely expressive xieyi style.
WA hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit East Asian painting and calligraphy. The hanging scroll was displayed in a room for appreciation; it is to be distinguished from the handscroll, which was narrower and designed to be viewed flat on a table in sections and then stored away again.
WHexi Caihua, Hexi painting, or Imperial-style decorative painting, is the royal variation of Caihua, a traditional Chinese decorative painting applied to the surface of the buildings.
WInk wash painting is a type of Chinese and East Asian ink brush painting which uses black ink, such as that used in Chinese calligraphy, in different concentrations. Emerging during the Tang dynasty of China (618–907), it overturned earlier, more realistic techniques. It is typically monochrome, using only shades of black, with a great emphasis on virtuoso brushwork and conveying the perceived "spirit" or "essence" of a subject over direct imitation. It flourished from the Song dynasty in China (960–1279) onwards, as well as in Japan after it was introduced by Zen Buddhist monks in the 14th century. Some Western scholars divide Chinese painting into three periods: times of representation, times of expression, and historical Oriental art. Chinese scholars have their own views different from this, and they believe that contemporary Chinese ink wash paintings are the pluralistic continuation of multiple historical traditions.
WInner painting, also known as inner drawing or inside painted, is a Chinese art form. It involves glass bottles which have pictures and often calligraphy painted on the inside surface of the glass. The bottles are produced by manipulating a specialized paint brush through the neck of the bottle.
WManual of the Mustard Seed Garden, sometimes known as Jieziyuan Huapu (芥子園畫譜), is a printed manual of Chinese painting compiled during the early-Qing Dynasty. Many renowned later Chinese painters, like Qi Baishi, began their drawing lessons with the manual. It is an important early example of colour printing.
WThe Mogao Caves, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, form a system of 500 temples 25 km (16 mi) southeast of the center of Dunhuang, an oasis located at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road, in Gansu province, China. The caves may also be known as the Dunhuang Caves; however, this term is also used as a collective term to include other Buddhist cave sites in and around the Dunhuang area, such as the Western Thousand Buddha Caves, Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves, Yulin Caves, and Five Temple Caves. The caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art spanning a period of 1,000 years. The first caves were dug out in AD 366 as places of Buddhist meditation and worship. The Mogao Caves are the best known of the Chinese Buddhist grottoes and, along with Longmen Grottoes and Yungang Grottoes, are one of the three famous ancient Buddhist sculptural sites of China.
WMarguerite Müller-Yao (Chinese: 姚慧; pinyin: Yao Hui; was a Chinese-German painter and art historian. The aim and main subject of her artistic and scientific works were the cultural relations and influences between China and the West.
WA New Year picture is a popular Banhua in China. It is a form of Chinese colored woodblock print, for decoration during the Chinese New Year Holiday, then later used to depict current events.
WThe Northern Landscape Style was a manner of Chinese landscape painting centered on a loose group of artists who worked and lived in Northern China during the Five Dynasties period that occupied the time between the collapse of the Tang dynasty and the rise of the Song. The style stands in opposition to the Southern School of Chinese painting.
W"One-Side" or "Xia's One-Side", just like "One-Corner" or "Ma's One-Corner", is also a particular type of composition in traditional Chinese painting. In this composition, the painters pushed the actual subjects of the painting to one side of the painting and made the other side empty implying a background of mist or snow. An imitation of master Xia Gui's 夏圭 landscape painting, "Returning Home in a Driving Rain", clearly illustrates how the artist arranged all of the trees, houses, and rocks at the bottom side of the painting and set them against the top empty portion of the painting where mist and distant mountains were lightly depicted--the two read stamps were not a part of the original painting.
WShan shui refers to a style of traditional Chinese painting that involves or depicts scenery or natural landscapes, using a brush and ink rather than more conventional paints. Mountains, rivers and waterfalls are common subjects of shan shui paintings.
WThe Southern School of Chinese painting, often called "literati painting", is a term used to denote art and artists which stand in opposition to the formal Northern School of painting. The distinction is not geographic, but relates to the style and contents of the works, and to some extent to the position of the artist. Typically, where professional, formal painters were classified as Northern School, scholar-bureaucrats who had either retired from the professional world or who were never a part of it constituted the Southern School.
WThe Three Friends of Winter is an art motif that comprises the pine, bamboo, and plum. The Chinese celebrated the pine, bamboo and plum together, as they observed that these plants do not wither as the cold days deepen into the winter season unlike many other plants. Known by the Chinese as the Three Friends of Winter, they later entered the conventions of East Asian culture. Together they symbolize steadfastness, perseverance, and resilience. They are highly regarded in Confucianism and as such represent the scholar-gentleman's ideal.
WThe Three perfections is the gathering of poets, calligraphers and painters to create an artwork in ancient China and Japan. The resulting product would be a painting that would include the work of a calligrapher to write a poem.
WThe Vinegar Tasters is a traditional subject in Chinese painting, and later spread to other East Asian countries. The allegorical composition depicts the three founders of China's major religious and philosophical traditions: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The theme in the painting has been interpreted as the three men tastes vinegar to reveal their perception on life.
WThe Western Thousand Buddha Caves is a Buddhist cave temple site in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China. The site is located approximately 35 km southwest of the urban centre and about the same distance from the Yangguan Pass; the area served as a staging post for travellers on the Silk Road. It is the western counterpart of the Mogao Caves, also known as the "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas" after the founding monk Yuezun's vision in 366 of "golden radiance in the form of a thousand Buddhas". The caves were excavated from the cliff that runs along the north bank of the Dang River. A number have been lost to floods and collapse; some forty are still extant. Twenty-two decorated caves house 34 polychrome statues and 800 m2 of wall paintings, dating from the Northern Wei to the late-Yuan and early-Ming Dynasties. The site was included within the 1961 designation of the Mogao Caves as a Major National Historical and Cultural Site.
WXianzi, or Kensu in Japanese, also known as the Shrimp Eater, was a semi-historical Chan/Zen monk, considered to be one of the “scattered sages,” who were deviant or otherwise unusual figures within the Chan tradition. Infamous for his iconoclastic breaking of the taboo on eating meat set forth in the Vinaya Code of monastic rules, the Shrimp Eater appears in several traditional Zen paintings as both a comedic figure that underscores the Zen tradition of humor, as well as an eccentric, enlightened individual.
WXuan paper, or Shuen paper or rice paper, is a kind of paper originating in ancient China used for writing and painting. Xuan paper is renowned for being soft and fine textured, suitable for conveying the artistic expression of both Chinese calligraphy and painting.
WThe Yulin Caves is a Buddhist cave temple site in Guazhou County, Gansu Province, China. The site is located some 100 km east of the oasis town of Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves. It takes its name from the elm trees lining the Yulin River, which flows through the site and separates the two cliffs from which the caves have been excavated. The forty-two caves house some 250 polychrome statues and 4,200 m2 of wall paintings, dating from the Tang Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty. The site was among the first to be designated for protection in 1961 as a Major National Historical and Cultural Site. In 2008 the Yulin Grottoes were submitted for future inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Chinese Section of the Silk Road.