The Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD) was as a golden age for China.
It was the largest empire China had ever had (or would have for almost another 1,000 years).
And an age of great artistic and intellectual achievement, including for Chinese calligraphy.
Let’s take a closer look at Tang dynasty calligraphy and some of its key features and figures.
Contents:
- Brief overview of the Tang dynasty
- Brief overview of Tang dynasty calligraphy
- A history of Tang dynasty calligraphy
- After the Tang dynasty
- What survives of Tang calligraphy today?
Brief overview of the Tang dynasty
Before the Tang dynasty, China had been divided for nearly three centuries.
(Excluding its short-lived predecessor, the Sui dynasty, see below).
Unification under the Tang rule brought about relative stability and prosperity. One writer noted:
[one could] visit Qing of Xiang in the South, go to Taiyuan or Fanyang in the North, or go to Sichuan or Liangfu in the West, and everywhere there were shops and emporiums for supplying merchant travellers. Though they should go as far as several thousand li, they need not carry even an inch-long blade.
Quoted in The Golden Peaches of Samarkland: A Study of T’ang Exotics by Edward H. Schafer (London: University of California Press, 1985), p. 8. (I have converted the Giles-Wade to pinyin in the above quote).
Brief overview of Tang dynasty calligraphy
Centralisation and stability fostered advances in both standardisation and innovation of Tang calligraphy.
This was the case in other areas, too.
- The imperial exams contributed to nation-wide academic standards (and calligraphy was one of the four aspects candidates were tested on)
- Poetic form and subject matter famously advanced (especially with Wang Wei (701 – 761), Li Bai (701 – 762) and Du Fu (712 – 770)
- The written language was reformed (thanks to figures like Han Yu (768 – 824) and Liu Zongyuan (773 – 819)).
Changes in scripts
Standard script
Regular script (also known as official or standard script) changed significantly during the Tang.
The drive for standardisation and the prevailing fashion for particular trend for vigorous yet balanced trends drove this.
Early Tang regular script is known for squat, symmetrical dimensions and thick, vigorous strokes. Later on its characters and strokes become slimmer.
After the Tang, no real major developments or changes occurred to standard script structures.
Running script
Running script was experimented with and even standardised to a degree.
As with regular script, this was largely thanks to the continued influence of China’s most eminent calligrapher: Wang Xizhi (303 – 361 AD).
Wang’s Preface to the Orchid Pavilion influenced the dynasty enormously.
The Taizong Emperor (see below) ordered copies of the Dingwu version of the Preface made and disseminated.
This version (likely first created by Ouyang Xun) probably deviated from the original. It reflected the Tang’s taste and in turn influenced Tang styles.
Grass script
Grass script (also known as cursive script) reached new heights of expression.
Its popularity reflects the wider appreciation of calligraphy as a prestigious form of artistic expression.
Other scripts
Clerical script saw its first major revival. It was particularly promoted by the Emperor Xuanzong (685 – 762 AD).
Seal script was also revived as an art form. The practice of stamping pieces with seals decorated in seal script began.
A history of Tang dynasty calligraphy
Tang dynasty poetry and calligraphy is often divided up into the following periods:
- The Sui (581 – 618) and early Tang (618 – 713 AD)
- High Tang (713 – 755 AD)
- Middle Tang (755 – 820 AD)
- Late Tang (820 – 907 AD)
The Sui dynasty (581 – 618 AD)
The Sui dynasty lasted only about 35 years.
However, it laid the foundations for the Tang’s political, economic and cultural achievements. For example:
- It unified northern and southern China for the first time since the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) 360 years before.
- It began building the Grand Canal. This supplied the empire’s capital, Chang’an in the north west, with food from the south.
It also began standardising Northern and Southern calligraphy styles. These had been separated for centuries.
Sui roots & branches of Tang calligraphy styles
The Sui dynasty brought together calligraphy that had separately developed for centuries.
These can be broadly summarised as:
A Northern Wei and Eastern Jin-influenced style
This can be further subdivided into:
- A stately, square style
- A balanced, graceful style: Initially developed by Zhiyong, later further developed by Ouyang Xun and Yu Shinan (see below)
A Northern Zhou and Northern Qi style
These can also be further subdivided:
- A Northern Zhou-influenced style: With slender, elegant strokes
- A Northern Qi-influenced style: A simple and vigour style, later developed further by Chu Suiliang and Yan Zhenqing (see below)
Zhiyong: the monastic calligrapher
Zhiyong (exact birth and death dates unknown) was a Buddhist monk and descendent of Wang Xizhi (344 – 386 AD).
He used Wang’s calligraphy style to write One Thousand Character Classic 800 times in both regular and running script.
This work was distributed around the Tang empire and used as a model for centuries to come.
The Early Tang (618 – 713 AD) period
The Early Tang period covers just under a century.
During this time, the imperial state’s power, territory grew, and standardisation of culture grew.
The Emperor Taizong (598 – 649 AD)
The Taizong Emperor of Tang played an important role in the development of Calligraphy.
His private collection is said to have numbered over 700 calligraphy pieces from various dynasties.
He admired Wang Xizhi’s work, which he encouraged members of the Academy of Calligraphy to both directly copy and imitate.
At least part of the reason for Taizong’s promotion of calligraphy was political.
The imperial family had non-Han Chinese heritage (from the Xianbei ethnicity).
By controlling the most prestigious Chinese cultural pursuit, he reinforced his dynasty’s legitimacy.
Sun Guoting’s Treatise on Calligraphy
Sun Guoting (b. c.646 – c. 691) was a relatively lowly official but an excellent calligrapher.
In 687 AD, he wrote one of the classics for the genre: Treatise on Calligraphy (书谱).
A physical copy of the masterpiece, written in a distinct and elegant cursive (/grass) script survives today.
He gives a history of calligraphy to date, then expounds on its techniques and theory.
Truly, fine calligraphy may be called the result of wisdom and skill achieving joint excellence, of mind and body acting in harmony.
– Sun Guoting, Treatise on Calligraphy
The Four Early Tang Masters (of Calligraphy)
The Four Early Tang Masters (of Calligraphy) (唐初四大家) refers to the four most influential calligraphers of the period.
1. Ouyang Xun (557 – 641 AD)
Ouyang Xun was an innovative regular script master.
He was a minister during the Sui dynasty. And his calligraphy showed the influence of both the Sui and Chen dynasty (557 – 589 AD).
His elegant, balanced characters generally looked both carefully and confidently written. They represent the height of the orthodox Wang Xizhi lineage of calligraphy.
2. Yu Shinan (558 – 638 AD)
Yu Shinan was a high official praised by the emperor himself.
He particularly excelled at regular and running script. His style is often described as being firm, flexible and full of grandeur.
3. Chu Suiliang (596 – 658 AD)
Chu Suiliang was one Taizong’s favourite officials and calligraphers.
His style built on Ouyang and Yu’s styles. It is described as both vigorous and balanced.
4. Xue Ji (649 – 713 AD)
Xue Ji possessed abilities in the ‘three perfections’: Calligraphy, painting, and poetry.
He was influenced by Chu Suiliang. His own characters were slender and incorporated elements of running script into regular script.
The High Tang (713 – 755 AD)
The High Tang is primarily today as a period when China’s culture and political power was at one of its all-time highs.
It was also the brightest period of Chinese calligraphy’s golden age.
Most of the period was under the Xuanzong Emperor’s reign. He was as enthusiastic a patron of calligraphy as Taizong had been.
The High Tang ended with the An Lushan Rebellion (755 – 763 AD). This military-led rebellion that quickly turned into a cataclysmic civil war.
The dynasty never fully recovered…
Zhang Xu (675 – ca. 750 AD)
Zhang Xu was a poet and official known for his innovative ‘crazy cursive’ (狂草) script.
His characters reinforce the theory that a calligraphy reflects its writer’s personality.
In Zhang’s case, his mesmerising eccentricity is said to be encapsulated in his work.
Yan Zhenqing (709 – 785 AD)
Yan Zhenqing, who studied with Zhang Xu, was a prominent official and military leader.
He has a reputation as the embodiment of the Confucian ideals of uprightness and loyalty.
(This reputation was sealed by his execution by a rebel whom he (Yan) refused to collaborate with.)
His characters are powerful and muscular, and often feature a distinct use of the right-falling “zhé” stroke.
Yan’s departed from earlier Tang styles with his more robust and square aesthetic.
The Middle Tang (755 – 820 AD)
During the Middle Tang, the dynasty tried to recover from the An Lushan Rebellion.
However, calligraphy, like poetry, flourished. But the era didn’t reach the sheer volume of innovation and new figures as the High Tang.
Li Yangbing (721/22 – 777)
Li Yangbing was a scholar-official famous for reviving seal script.
He often collaborated with Yan Zhenqing. Li’s seal script headers would complement Yan’s standard script body text.
Huaisu (737 – 799)
The eccentric and talented monk Huaisu added more grass-script masterpieces to the canon.
He is often compared to Zhang Xu, who he never met. However, he studied under Yan Zhenqing, who had directly learned from Zhang Xu.
Like Zhang, Huaisu drank a lot. He also wrote on walls and leaves when paper was not available.
The Late Tang (820 – 907 AD)
Politically, the Late Tang was a period of general decline punctuated with flickers of hope.
By its end, the Tang state broke up into the period known as the Five Kingdoms. It would by about half a century before the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD) reunified most of China.
Liu Gongquan (778 – 865)
Liu Gongquan was a great synthesizer of the styles of Ouyang Xun, Chu Suiliang, Yu Shinan, and Yanzhenqing.
He developed a refined, spacious and balanced regular script.
Du Mu (803 – 852)
The great poet and calligrapher Du Mu seems to have sensed his dynasty’s decline. His poetry is full of nostalgia and a sense of loss.
His free-flowing running script masterpiece Poem for Zhang Haohao reflects this in both its form and content.
Many calligraphers began to favour longer, thinner strokes. The distinctly squat characters with plump strokes popular in the earlier Tang periods were left behind.
After the Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty finally formally collapsed in 907.
What followed was the era known now as the Ten Kingdoms and Five Dynasties (907 – 960 AD).
This was not generally seen as a great era for calligraphy’s development. However, the calligrapher Yang Ningshi (873 – 954) does stand out from this period.
About half a century later, the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD) unified the Chinese empire again.
It brought forth a cultural flourishing similar to – yet unique from – the Tang dynasty. This included many great calligraphers.
Song dynasty calligraphy was greatly influenced by Tang dynasty.
It wouldn’t produce the same volume of great calligraphers and innovation. But it advanced art theory around calligraphy.
During the short-lived Yuan dynasty (1279 – 1368) saw a reversion to Tang (and earlier) models of calligraphy.
What survives of Tang calligraphy today?
Some – but not many – original ink on paper calligraphy pieces survive today. Given the time that has lapsed since then, this is remarkable.
There are also some steles (inscribed stone monuments) and ink rubbings of them. And a number of direct copies (and copies of copies) of works.
Many of these have been passed down through the centuries. Today they are housed and preserved in museums across China.