The Five Dynasties period (907 – 960 AD) was a time of civil war between short-lived states.
For half a century, each fought over the carcass of Tang dynasty’s (618 – 907 AD) empire.
Yet remarkably, it was a time of great development for Chinese landscape painting.
A lot is still unknown about exactly why and how this development occurred.
Given the chaos of era, perhaps this will forever remain unknown.
However, what is known is well worth examining…
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Pre-Five Dynasties dynasty landscape painting
Before the Five Dynasties period, landscape painting was a developed and popular genre.
During the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD), a distinct landscape style appeared. It often made use of blue and golden colouring on handscrolls.
Private patrons and the imperial court would employ professional painters. The latter would often do this through the Academy of Painting, which would train and employ artists.
The concept of painting being deeply linked to poetry and calligraphy also developed.
Take the famous Tang poet (and painter) Wang Wei (699 – 759 AD), for example.
By the early Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD), he would be considered the paragon of the artist-scholar whose paintings and poems come from the same source.
Landscape painting during the Five Dynasties period
The Five Dynasties period (or, more fully: the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms [五代十国]) followed the collapse of the Tang dynasty.
China was broken up into competing and short-lived states. Many of these states established courts that employed court painters.
But this is a difficult period for art historians because of its fragmented and disordered nature. Records and surviving original paintings are relatively scarce.
Despite this, it was clearly a time of great progress and innovation in landscape painting. At least some of this must have developed during the late Tang dynasty.
By the end of the Five Dynasties, the genre essentially had all of the main features that would define it during the Song dynasty.
And its greatest exponent would have lived out his life…
Up until the Tang (and beyond), Northern China was still where most political power was held.
Wen Fong has argued that during the Five Dynasties period: “Poets and artists, disenchanted with the world of human affairs, turned away to seek a realm of spiritual enlightenment.” (Wen Fong, Beyond Representation, p.71).
Northern painters during the Five Dynasties
Both the primary Tang capital, Chang’an (today’s Xi’an, Shaanxi Province), and its Eastern capital Luoyang (Henan Province), were based in the north.
So, too – for now – was most of China’s population. (In the following centuries, a gradual shift of population, wealth, and power to the south took place).
Jing Hao (ca. 855 – ca. 930 AD)
Jing Hao (荆浩) is perhaps the earliest prominent northern landscape painter from this time.
Not a lot is known about his biography. He was born during the late Tang, when the empire was quickly and obviously declining.
(Many argue that the Tang dynasty never did fully recover its past glory after the civil war that took place in its mid-point, the An Lushan Rebellion (756 – 762 AD)).
And for a period, he lived in seclusion the Taihang Mountain range between Henan and Shanxi Province.
The Song Dynasty Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings (1120), written two centuries after Jing’s lifetime, states:
自号为洪谷子。博雅好古，以山水专门 […]
– Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings, scroll 10
[Jing Hao] called himself the Master of the Broad Valley. He was a learned and genteel man who loved antiquity and specialised in landscape painting […]
His landscapes already carry many of the hallmarks of the distinct Five Dynasties and later on Song Dynasty landscape style.
Namely, the awe-inspiring yet calming scene dominated by a mountain, populated with vegetation, and set against a misty horizon.
Guan Tong (ca. 907 – ca. 960 AD)
Guan Tong (关仝 [Guān Tóng], sometimes written as 关同 or 关穜) was a student of Jing Hao’s. And in many art critics’ eyes, he would go on to surpass his teacher.
His dramatic, rugged landscapes encapsulate the northern Chinese environment he lived and travelled in.
Li Cheng (919 – 967 AD)
Li Cheng (李成) is the most important figure in Five Dynasties landscape painting if not any period.
He was an educated aristocrat descended from the same clan as the Tang imperial family (all Tang emperors were also from the same Li family).
The surviving works attributed to Li are considered by many to be copies of originals. Even so, his striking originality and skill is clear to see.
Li’s style of landscape painting would go on to adopted by Song Dynasty court painters and a semi-official ‘Li linage’ emerged.
Guo Xi (ca. 1001 – ca. 1090) was one example of a painter who purposely and openly worked in a ‘Li style of painting’.
The Li lineage was often contrasted with the Fan lineage (based on the work of early Song dynasty landscape painter Fan Kuan (active ca. 1023 – 1031 AD).
Southern painters during the Five Dynasties
A distinct southern landscape painting style emerged simultaneously to the northern style during the Five Dynasties.
Painters from both regions were obviously cut off from one another by geography and politics. However, they could well have shared similar influences from the late Tang period.
Southern vs northern Five Dynasties landscape painting
The southern style of landscape painting naturally reflects the different geography of the region.
The term ‘Jiangnan’ (江南 ’south of the river’) is often used to describe the area just south of the Yangtze between approximately Nanjing and the eastern coast.
Paintings from this fertile and commercially prosperous area often reflected its geography, with undulating hills and waterways lined with lush vegetation.
This contrasted with the often harsher, starker scenery of northern landscape paintings.
However, the two regions’ paintings also shared some similarities.
For example, a tendency towards muted colours or monochrome (i.e., no colours), and emphasis on the contrast between natural and man-made elements.
Dong Yuan (d. 962 AD)
Dong Yuan (董源 [Dǒng Yuán], sometimes written as 董元 [same pronunciation]) worked as a court painter for the Southern Tang (937 – 975 AD) state, based in what is today’s Nanjing (within the Jiangnan region).
He appears to have developed in style and skill as his career progressed. His later paintings become simpler and almost more abstract.
Juran (960 – 985 AD)
Juran (巨然 [Jùrán]) was a Buddhist monk and court painter who appears to be the only prominent Five Dynasties painter to make it to the Song imperial court.
Once there, he was able to access paintings by Li Cheng, which unlike Li had made it to the court, too.
These paintings influenced Juran, who himself had studied under Dong Yuan.
This enabled Juran to help create an imperial landscape style that synthesised both northern and southern painting styles.
The Five Dynasties’ impact on Song dynasty painting
After the Five Dynasties period, the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD) unified China. And with each state it conquered, it also obtained their painting collections and painters.
So, Five Dynasties landscape painting had a direct and profound influence on the genre during the Song.
Today, the Song dynasty landscape painting is considered to be the peak of the genre, if not all Chinese painting.
But it would not have been possible without the innovation during the Five Dynasties.