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The Intimate Academic Style of the Southern Song (1127-1278)

During the latter part of the Song Dynasty, after North China had been conquered by non-Chinese and the Chinese emperors had been forced to move their capital to the South and give up efforts to control all China, academic painting took a new and different turn. Professional painters began increasingly to explore smaller and more intimate forms of painting, even when depicting broad landscapes.  In reducing the scale of their paintings, they also developed innovative ways to use abbreviated lines and ink washes to represent effectively landscape features which the Northern Song masters had rendered with intense detail. The less grandiose painting style of the Southern Song was, in effect, an invitation to amateurs. Although the academic painters achieved simplicity through enormous imagination and effort, the skills they employed were more accessible to literati, who were, after all, masters of brushwork in the field of calligraphy.  

The paintings below are by perhaps the two most celebrated Southern Song painters. The "handscroll" is by Xia Gui. Handscrolls, unlike hanging scrolls, were not meant for display. They were stored rolled, often in wooden boxes (left), and were only removed and viewed, section by section, when the owner wished to enjoy the painting or to share it with intimate guests. The scene below is one section of a longer scroll. The second painting, an "album leaf" (small silk painted page, in this case in the shape of a fan), is by Ma Yuan.