Back to page 6 Chinese Literati Painting -- Page 7 To page 8
The Yuan Masters
The tradition begun by men like Zhao Mengfu, whose paintings you saw on page 6, was enlarged through the rest of the Yuan Dynasty, and a number of exemplary literati painters developed simple but distinctive styles that were so admired that they came to be regarded as models for later painters (much the way that ealier, exemplary calligraphers had been models for later men). Great literati painters of the next 500 years would begin by adapting their calligraphic skills to the styles of these Yuan models of visual art as they learned how to paint. Settling on one or more as their primary models, they then would, if they were men of talent, develop original ways to enlarge on or depart from those styles, in paintings that were essentially new innovations, though always firmly within traditions of the past.
Here are paintings by two of the most famous of Yuan period painters. The first shows the spare ink style and empty landscape of Ni Zan -- perhaps the most austere of the Yuan masters. Ni Zan's painting is in the hanging scroll style, but note how dramatically reduced the ink and detail is compared to the hanging scrolls of the Northern Song masters on page 4. How little ink Ni Zan uses to create a hauntingly chill landscape! Beneath Ni Zan's work is a section from a handscroll by Wu Zhen, a hermit-artist who often celebrated lone fishermen in his work. Wu Zhen painted in several basic styles, using a dry brush sometimes, one wet with ink other times, but always creating scenes that conveyed the attraction of Nature, usually with only one or two isolated people lodged within it.
