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- compare traditional Chinese painting to the European Impressionists of the 19th century who were themselves influenced by ideas and techniques from the Far East, especially Japanese prints with their use of empty spaces, the division of the composition into high and low viewpoint and the vertical format.
Traditional Chinese painting was largely the preserve of an aloof and independent class of scholar-gentlemen or intellectual aristocrats called wen ren (literati), who from child�hood had the immense advantage of having a long and arduous training with the brush to master both calligraphy and painting. They were usually equally adept at poetry, calligra�phy and painting, the Three Perfections� of the literati tradition. Often they were officials in the court and the provinces who had no need to use their art to make a living. They liked to use painting as a vehicle to unburden their moments of depression and as a means of expressing their feeling for life and the world. The concept of the scholar-gentlemen as an amateur painter would end in the 20th century. As social change brought about a more universal education and as commercialism and professionalism moved into painting, it was the literati who became victims of the changes. New artists with varied cultural backgrounds emerged and their primary goal was to use their paintings to make a living.
Chinese Painting in the Fir^t Half of the 20th Century
For much of the 19th century, Chinese painting was in decline and suffering from stifling dogma. The endless duplications of its glorious past showed that it was an art form bankrupt of ideas. By the late 19th century, Shanghai, which was experiencing tremen�dous impacts from European civilization, became the centre of painting in China and the birthplace of modern Chinese art. The prosperous port of Shanghai at the end of the 19th century had an abundance of wealthy patrons with tastes for elegant and colourful paintings, so it became a place for professional artists to gather and cater to their wealthy clients, who were mainly merchants. Most notable of these highly skilled artists were Ren Xun (1835-93), Ren Yu (1853-1901), Qian Huian (1833-1911) [51], Ni Tian (1855-1919) [45] and Lu Hui (1851 -1920) [A], to name a few. The flamboyant and appealing style of the Shanghai School became popular and spread to other parts of China.
Kang Youwei, a scholar-official involved in the ill-fated 1898 Reform Movement, was one of the first intellectuals to call upon contemporary Chinese artists to begin a new era by combining Chinese and Western art techniques. His contribution to the modernization of Chinese art was immense.
One of the most important factors to bring about changes in the art circles of China at this time was the appearance of Chinese pictorial journals or magazines with woodblock illustrations. These art magazines discussed Western art and subject matter as well as techniques of perspective, shading, colour scheme and composition. The wide circulation of these inexpensive magazines served a very important function. They educated a large public by enabling them to study the great art masterpieces of the world. Suddenly the ordinary people were exposed not only to the traditional Chinese painting themes of landscapes, birds-and-flowers, portraitures and religious topics, but also to common everyday subjects as portrayed in Western realism. As a result, artists from all walks of life, not just the privileged elite, began to zealously take part in the art movement, absorbing current international styles and developing an extensive range of options. A direct out�growth of this new form of art education was the establishment of art departments at colleges emulating the Western pattern. Shortly after the end of World War I, several art schools were opened in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing and Hangzhou. The colleges taught both Chinese and Western painting principles and caused a growing awareness of the values of Western painting and art education in China.
In the early Republican period (1912-49), there were tense confrontations between Chinese traditional or national paintings (guohua) and Western paintings (xiyanghua). Young Chinese artists went abroad to pursue further studies in art. Some went to Japan,
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