The tradition which arose in a period antedating the T’ang epoch was therefore still unbroken in the Sung period, and I am sure that proofs of this will increase in number as our information becomes more accurate. New evidence furnished by the paintings found at Tun-huang and certain frescoes at Murtuq has recently shown that the type of Buddhist hermit—the Lohan meditating in solitude—whose inception had, until these discoveries, been attributed to Li Lung-mien, in reality dated much further back and originated in the Buddhist art of Eastern Turkestan, perhaps even in India. From those regions are derived the magnificent subjects of which Li Lung-mien made use to express meditation. Sometimes there are emaciated faces, withered bodies with protruding tendons that outline deep hollows, and again rotund and peaceful figures meditating in tranquil seclusion. From the written records as well as in his works, there is every evidence that he was one of those who revived Buddhist painting. No matter what models he chose to follow, he always gave them a stress and a peculiar distinction, while from the standpoint of pure art he had the ability to portray them with finished elegance and majestic dignity.
Li Lung-mien was not content to paint Buddhist figures only. He painted landscape also, and in his youth he had painted horses. A great critic of the Sung period said of him that “his soul entered into communion with all things, his spirit penetrated the mysteries and the secrets of nature.” This critic added that one day he saw Li Lung-mien painting a Buddhist divinity. The words of the god fairly leapt from the lines; it seemed as if the brush of the master summoned them one by one into being. Like all the masters of his time, Li Lung-mien sought to free the spirit from its outward semblance. Beyond the material, he perceived the immaterial force which animates the world. As a landscape painter his conception of Nature was broad and majestic. His graceful and harmonious line recalls the happiest moments in the history of plastic art, and he challenges comparison with a facile genius like Raphael. But he includes the whole realm of nature in his subjects, and in his work we find traces, expressed with greater breadth, but with quite as keen an insight, of an ancient and noble art, such as was found almost extinct in the work of Ku K’ai-chih.
PLATE XIII. PIGEONS BY CH’IEN HSÜAN
Yüan Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
We cannot leave the Sung painters without devoting some attention to Mi Fei and his son. The two Mi’s, indeed, accomplished a far-reaching reform in Chinese technique; they enriched painting with a new imagery and founded a school which, like that of Ma, exerted an influence on later periods and was strongly felt in Korea.
In addition to being a great painter, Mi Fei was a great calligraphist. This is apparent however little one may have seen of work in his style. He possesses in the highest degree what the Chinese describe as the “handling of flowing ink.” He used the technique of monochrome almost exclusively, and so closely related tone values to the line, or rather to the brush-stroke, that it is difficult to decide whether he paints rather than draws, or draws rather than paints. Properly speaking, he does not employ the line at all but works by masses, by broad, heavily inked touches, without pausing to emphasize the deep warm blacks provided by Chinese ink. His manner recalls certain drawings by Rembrandt, also produced by strong inking, which evoke a strange and magical effect of light. Such was the spirit in which Mi Fei treated landscape. This technique marks his style and gives it an individuality that is indisputable. The vehemence with which he attacks forms, the rapidity of his brush-stroke, the way in which things spring from such energy, call to mind pictures by European masters, painted in full color, and it may be said of the paintings of Mi Fei that they are fairly colored by their tremendous vitality, if the quality of the materials he employed permits the use of such a term. Therefore Mi Fei and his son are responsible for a new technique, a strongly individual work, and the creation of a style which marks the highest achievement in monochrome. The trend which impelled them was, however, general. Carried to its extreme it led to the style of painting called calligraphic, of which there has been occasion to speak several times.
Calligraphic painting, or the literary style, has its origin in the studies of Wang Wei when, renouncing the aid of colour, he strove by harmony of shading and by tone values, to reproduce the vast reaches of space and all the shifting subtlety of atmospheric perspective. The exclusive use of Chinese ink necessitated special studies since thus calligraphy was directly approached. The different styles of writing are almost drawing in themselves. Each style of writing has its own rules for dissecting the written character and making the stroke. Now, as is known, the Chinese painters attached supreme importance to the line and to the brush-stroke. This was due in part to their equipment and in part to the fact that the amateurs of art were prepared by their classical studies to appreciate the strength or the delicacy of a line judged for itself, quite independently of the forms represented. We must also bear in mind that all of the Chinese painters were scholars, belonging to the class of the literati. [14] Writers, poets, statesmen, soldiers, Buddhist or Taoist priests, and philosophers have all furnished the greatest names in art. Under such conditions the technical relationship between the line of the painter and that of the calligraphist was closer, since painter and calligraphist were frequently united in one and the same person. Thence came the early tendency to use monochrome and to represent forms in the abstract, rendering them more and more as mere themes, thus reducing the subject to a few simple calligraphic strokes.
It is difficult for a European to follow the thought of the Chinese painters in these daring simplifications. Sometimes they are carried to such an extreme as to leave us with a feeling of perplexity. Often however they give rise to mighty conceptions and paintings whose essential character impresses us as a unique product of genius. Calligraphic painting reached its highest level during the Sung and Yüan periods. It was so closely allied to painting that the Emperor Hui Tsung, who ascended the throne in 1100, founded the Imperial Academy of Calligraphy and Painting in the first year of his reign. Hui Tsung was himself a painter. The books credit him with especial mastery in the representation of birds of prey, eagles, falcons and hawks, which seems to be sufficient reason for deliberately attributing to him every painting of a bird of prey, even when there is evidence that it was painted two or three centuries later than his time. Perhaps before long we shall find authentic paintings by Hui Tsung. A painting belonging to the Musée Guimet, which comes from the collection of Tuan Fang, is the one which by its annotations bears the greatest guaranty of authenticity, but it is a representation of a figure painting of the T’ang dynasty and gives us no information as to the manner in which Hui Tsung painted eagles. However, certain paintings from his collections have come down to us. Whether or not by the imperial hand they proclaim a virile art, an instinct for the grandiose and a majestic character which are the qualities of which the eagle is a symbol.
The foundation of the Academy of Calligraphy and Painting had results quite other than those hoped for by its founder. It became imbued with the evils of formalism. It was established in the imperial capital in court surroundings, in other words, in an atmosphere from which true artists depart with all possible speed. It suffered inevitably through the influences of a taste, refined it is true, but which already inclined toward mannerisms and preciosity. Conventions were established, subjects became stereotyped, the taste for brilliant colors developed and, even before the end of the Sung period, there was a marked division between academic and national art. Pedantry and affectation began to take the place of boldness and strength.