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- Introduction
The aims of this survey must be modest, as it is quite difficult to discuss in a few short pages an art such as Chinese painting which has had an uninterrupted tradition of more than two thousand years. Therefore, the main purposes of this survey will be to provide some basic intro�ductory information on Chinese painting for the novice, and to provide a useful annotated list of most of the major pre-modern Chinese paintings to be found in Canadian collections for the academic.
Painting is an integral part of Chinese civili�zation, and is considered by the Chinese to be their only �true� art. Other art forms such as sculpture and ceramics, for all their perfection, play a minor role and are regarded as crafts.
Chinese painting is much more than a mere handicraft. It takes years of practice to achieve control of body and discipline of mind which are needed to master it. Chinese painting is the only art form that is powerful and lyrical enough to command an equal footing with their poetry and philosophy. As the predominant art form of China, painting conceptualizes much of the beauty and philosophy of life that can be found in one of the world�s oldest cultures. It is truly unique in world art.
A few paragraphs concerning the aesthetic ideals and subject matter in Chinese painting and its development in general may be found helpful:
The fifth century art critic, Xie He, laid down the most important set of principles of Chinese painting in his Critique of Ancient Painting. The six basic canons he made are as much alive and zealously practised today as they were centuries ago. They are:
1. creating a lifelike tone and atmosphere (rhythmic vitality)
2. building structure through brush-work
3. depicting the forms of things as they are
4. conformity to kind in applying colours
5. composition mu&t be consistent, artistic, and in accord with the dictates of space
6. live up to tradition by transcribing and copying the ancient masters
These were the qualities which a painting
should possess if it was to be ranked in the highest class.
The sixth canon demonstrates that the Chinese were great lovers of tradition. To copy the style of the old masters was considered a necessary part of the training of every artist. The highest praise a painter could receive is to be told that his paintings were indistinguishable from those of his master or from that of a master who lived centuries before him. The Chinese, while admiring a man�s originality, demand first and foremost that he display a reverence for past accomplishments. However, since copies of famous painters were produced en masse throughout the ages, it now causes tremendous problems with authenticity.
A twelfth-century catalogue, Xuanhe Hua pu, classifies Chinese paintings into the following ten groups:
1. Taoist and Buddhist, dao shi
2. Human affairs, ren wu
3. Palaces and other buildings, gong shi
4. Foreign tribes, fan zu
5. Dragons and fishes, long yu
6. Landscapes, shan shui
7. Animals, chu shou
8. Flowers and birds, hua niao
9. Ink bamboos, mo zhu
10. Vegetables and fruits, su guo
However, of all the subjects, it is landscape which was the most popular and formed the nucleus of Chinese painting during the last fifteen hundred years. All the skill with which the European artists devoted to portraiture and to the depiction of human figures, the Chinese have given to their passionate love of painting Nature.
For the occidental, Chinese painting is easy to look at but very difficult to evaluate and appre�ciate. First, the westerner must forget his own mental preconceptions, throw out his artistic education and refrain from making comparisons of Chinese paintings with the famous canvas paintings of Europe. The Chinese are interpret�ing the material properties of things and living beings in their own distinctive manner, and are
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