Chinese Paintings Influences the Work of European Artist

The late Ming period have been dominated by the painter and theoretician Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636). Tung's work and ideas had the effect of "orienting the painting of his time toward a formal academicism, in which everything was worked out in terms of formulas and rules" (Cheng 20).

In Tung's opinion, painters had all the models they needed inside work of preceding centuries. He was most heavily influenced by the old Yuan Dynasty masters and he quoted one ancient painter towards the effect that whilst the painter holds the living globe in his hand, "those who paint in a really fine (or detailed) manner make themselves servants of Nature" (qtd. by Siren 136). The observation of nature in Chinese art was not centered on the reproduction of the actual appearances of points in terms of their color, or texture, or "the corporeality of mass" (Cahill, Chinese 11). Instead Chinese painting had often been based on the use from the line to delineate boundaries and the brush stroke remained central on the art for centuries. European painting had also begun with the delineation of boundaries but its character changed as painters "turned their attention during the outlines to what they enclosed, concentrating over a rendition of light and shadow, mass and texture, softening or obscuring contours

Hejzlar, Josef. Chinese Watercolors. New York: Gallery Books, 1978.

The strain of European influence traced by Cahill includes a variety of artists. But the general thrust of his argument is also understood with some principal examples: the Ming painter Wu Pin (ca. 1568-1626); the early Ch'ing Individualist painter Kung Hsien (1617-1689); and Tao--chi (1641-after 1710) (also referred to as Shih T'ao), who was in between the Four Eminent Monk-Painters who had withdrawn to monasteries.

The painter Kung Hsien, whose work bridged the two dynasties, turned to the old Northern Sung type in his reaction against Tung's academicism. Cahill provides various examples from the sources of Kung Hsien's approaches and compositional ideas in European works to become discovered in China. The Northern Sung variety adopted by Kung Hsien featured short blunt brush strokes that lent themselves to effect of blurring the landscape and Kung Hsien, with Western models as well, produced a blurred illusionism in his landscapes. In landscape painting the much more distinctly the objects are painted, the less the final results of depth and distance on which illusion depends. Kung Hsien's technique allowed him to build a far more illusionistic landscape by painting his objects much less realistically. And, in terms of composition, Kung Hsien also utilized European models as he departed from "established compositions and restricted sets of scenic types" to which painters had formerly been limited (Cahill, Compelling 176).

Cahill, James. Chinese Painting. New York: Skira-Rizzoli, 1977.

Briessen, Fritz van. The Way of the Brush: Painting Methods of China and Japan. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1962.

The source of Western art in China was the Jesuit missionaries who very first entered the nation in 1581 under the leadership of Matteo Ricci.

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