Song Dynasty Landscape Painting: Masters, Mist & China’s Greatest Visual Age

Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD) landscape painting is widely considered Chinese painting’s crowning achievement.

Never before – or after – would there be such a high level of innovation and variety in this genre.

It helped painting gain a status close to calligraphy and poetry.

But during the Song dynasty’s three centuries, landscape painting changed – like the empire itself – considerably.

Contents

A history of Song dynasty landscape painting

Pre-Song: The Five dynasties period (907 – 960 AD)

The Song dynasty unified China after half a century of chaos now known as the Five Dynasties period.

Despite the violence and change of this period, Five dynasties landscape painting underwent unprecedented development.

This provided the roots for Song landscape painting to grow from.

Li Cheng (919 – 967 AD)

Li Cheng (李成) was the most significant Five Dynasties painter.

He was an aristocrat and painter who died in the early years of the Song dynasty. Thereafter, his name represented the educated and sophisticated ideal of a painter.

His style was adopted (or appropriated) as the official style of the early Song court.

It contained aspects of both northern and southern style painting from the preceding period. This made it an appropriate embodiment of Song unification.

After Li, leading Song court painters were often linked to a ‘Li linage’. Many painted in his manner and acknowledged his influence.

The Northern Song period (960 – 1127 AD)

Dynasty overview

The Northern Song refers to approximately the first half of the Song dynasty. 

Today, the Northern Song dynasty is generally noted for its political and cultural achievements. Many have referred to it as China’s renaissance.

At its height, it covered an area of approximately 1.7 million square miles (/2.8 million km²) and had a population of approximately 104 million.

Its capital was in Bianliang (today’s Kaifeng, Henan Province). 

Early on, its rulers were committed to unification of Chinese lands and reform of its civil bureaucracies.

As different states and kingdoms were conquered by the Song army, their art collections and artists were often brought to the Song court.

Northern Song landscape painting features

Northern Song landscape paintings, like those from the Five Dynasties period, are generally associated with monumental, awe-inspiring depictions of nature.

Within this theme, their often – but not always – contain distinct features, such as: 

• A dominant and centrally placed mountain peak
• Distant but multifaceted views (E.g., simultaneously looking up at mountains and down upon their peaks)
• Placement of small human figures and man-made structures
• The presence of water (mist, waterfalls, streams)
• Monochrome (just black and white) or light use of colours
• Sophisticated brushwork, shading, and vantage point techniques.

Unlike paintings during the previous unified dynasty, the Tang dynasty (618 – 960 AD), there is often a coherent, unified view, i.e., rather than a collection of separate objects scattered across a scene.

(Some even believe this reflects the philosophical unification of Song Dynasty Neo-Confucianism, exemplified in the work of Zhu Xi (1130 – 1200 AD).)

Art theory

Art theory flourished the Song.

It built on principles established over the previous centuries, such as Xie He’s (active ca. 479 – 502 AD) six principles of painting. (Jing Hao – see below – even came up with his own six principles).

The emergence of the literati as a distinct group of scholar-officials added the most important development to Chinese art theory.

They distinguished themselves from professional painters in several ways. For example, they emphasised the educational background and moral development (often seen as one and the same) of painters.

In practical terms, this meant emphasising subject theme, context (including a painting’s circumstances – often noted in colophons, artist biography, etc.) over technical skill.

Juran (active ca. 960 – ca. 985 AD)

Juran (巨然) was the only significant Five dynasties artist to make it directly to the Song court.

He was a Buddhist priest based in the Southern Tang (937 – 975 AD) capital of Jiangning (today’s Nanjing, Jiangsu Province). 

Along with his mentor Dong Yuan (d. 962), Juran is regarded as a co-founder of the ‘Southern School’ of landscape painting.

This often-featured river landscapes populated with rounded hills and soft outlines of vegetation. 

Earthly and moist texture effects were created with layers of wet ink. This all reflected the fertile and warm climate of much of southern China.

Juran’s View of Mist and Vapours at Dawn decorated the Hanlin Institute. It was commissioned by the official Song Yujian. His son later wrote:

笔迹野逸，效李成之作，而又自成一家之妙。
[Juran’s] brushwork [on View of Mist and Vapours at Dawn] was wild and loose, just like in the works of Li Cheng. But it established his own marvellous school.

– Song Qi

Yan Wengui (active ca. 980 – 1010 AD)

Yan Wengui (燕文贵) was originally from southern China. He worked as an official and general as well as a court painter.

Yan was clearly heavily influenced by Li Cheng’s ‘northern style’ of painting. Like Li, his landscapes often featured mists and mountains.

Some have speculated that Li had not inserted his own architectural figures into his paintings.

This was not the case for Yan, who also specialised in architectural paintings.

Yan’s paintings also stand out for the consistency of repeated elements in them.

Fan Kuan (active ca. 1023 – 1031 AD)

Not a lot is known about who Fan Kuan was (including his real name).

He started out by directly studying Li Cheng’s paintings. However, he appears to have had some kind of revelation, whereby he decided that:

[…] 吾与其师于人者，未若师诸物也。吾与其师于物者，未若师诸心。
[…] when I learned from these [past] painters, it was not as good as learning from objects themselves. And when I when I learn from the objects themselves, this was not as good as learning from the objects’ inner natures.

– Fan Kuan

His eccentric, wondering dishevelled and personality was in stark contrast to the aristocratic, reserved Li (or at least the image created of Li by later generations). 

However, his paintings are regarded almost as highly as Li’s.

From what survives today, Fan’s style creates an imposing and powerful effect.

This was summarised as ‘martial’ (武) by Wang Shen (see below), in contrast to the ‘civilian’ (文) style of Li.

Qu Ding (active ca. 1023 – 1056)

Not much is known about Qu Ding and Summer Mountains is his only known work.

(This work was long attributed to Yan Wengui, but later on Wen Fong re-attributed it to Qu.)

There is a brief entry on Qu in the Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings (1120 AD):

开封府人。善画山水。仁宗朝为图画院祗候。学燕贵作山林四时风物之变态，与夫烟霞惨舒、泉石凌砾之状，颇有思致。虽未能极其精妙，视等辈故已駸駸度越矣。
Qu Ding was a Kaifeng man. He was good at painting landscapes. Under Emperor Renzong, he served as a painter-in-waiting at the Painting Academy. He studied Yan Wengui’s changing mountain and forest scenery throughout the four seasons. In the appearance of rising and dispersing mists and auroras, he displayed excellent imagination. Though he was never able to obtain the utmost skill, he gradually surpassed his cohort.
– Extract from Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings

Despite this relatively subdued praise, Summer Mountains has long been considered a masterpiece.

It uses skilful brushwork to suggest both a dense volume of details and receding distance.

The net effect is brilliant blend of realism and suggested unreality that so predominates much of Song landscape painting.

Guo Xi (1001 – 1090 AD)

Guo Xi (郭熙) (pronounced ‘gore-she’) entered the song court at a relatively late age (perhaps as old as 60).

Within a decade he became the Shenzong Emperor’s favourite painter.

He was tasked with decorating the most important government buildings with his landscapes.

The timing of his appointment overlapped with the launching of the famous (or infamous) New Policies. 

This gave Guo a high level of scope and responsibility in his work.

With this in mind, his name was linked to that of Li Cheng in order to imply the continuity and lineage of an official imperial landscape style.

Despite this, he was still admired and friendly with many of the anti-New Policies politicians.

This probably contributed to his work being neglected a couple of decades after his death, under the Huizong Emperor (see below).

Wang Shen (ca. 1148 – ca. 1103)

Wang Shen (王诜) was a descendent of a founding Song dynasty general who also married into the Song royal family. 

He was married to the Emperor Shenzong’s sister and even tutored the future Emperor Huizong.

Besides painting, he was also gifted in calligraphy and poetry. And his status and wealth enabled him to establish a large collection of artworks.

Wang himself learned under professional Palace painters, such as Guo Xi, and was friends with literati such as Su Shi.

His Serried Hills over a Misty River is noteworthy for its innovative use of empty space.

The opening of this landscape, done on a handscroll, would have unfurled gradually to viewers. 

This would have created an almost travel-like sensation of rowing through mist before discovering scenery.

The Huizong Emperor (r. 1100 – 1127 AD)

Huizong (real name Zhao Ji) favoured an imperial landscape style that featured Li Cheng’s style alongside the blue and green Tang style.

He had studied painting under two of his uncles, one of which was Wang Shen (above).

Huizong was not originally meant to be Emperor. So, he had grown up free to pursue his artistic and literary passions.

But when his father, the Emperor Zhezong, died young, Huizong was selected to take over. 

Huizong spent a lot of time focusing on the academies of calligraphy and painting – to the detriment of other work…

In 1125, he was captured by Jurchen soldiers shortly after abdicating. He spent the last decade of his life in captivity in Manchuria.

Mi Fu (1051 – 1107 AD)

Mi Fu (米芾) was an outspoken and eccentric official, calligrapher and poet. He was awarded a Doctorate of Calligraphy and Painting under Huizong.

Unfortunately, not much of Mi Fu’s painting survives today. However, his writings on the subject do.

And the work of his son, Mi Youren (1086 – 1155 AD) gives us a clearer idea of Mi’s school of painting.

What particularly stands out about Mi Fu’s landscape painting is how it departs from the professional tradition’s grandiosity and detail.

Mi Fu used ink dots to great almost abstract landscapes and features. Many later critics consider his work the apex of scholar-painting.

The abbreviated, intellectualized mode of landscape painting found its fullest expression in the art of Mi Fu and his son Mi [Youren], who together created a style based upon ink dots of non-descriptive character, aimed at suggesting the “inexhaustible flavor of nature.”

Richard M. Barnhart, Along the Border of Heaven: Sung and Yüan Paintings from the C. C. Wang Family Collection, (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983), p46

This style would go on to greatly influence Southern Song landscape painting.

The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings (1120 AD)

The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings listed and described the Huizong Emperor’s collection of paintings (i.e., the royal collection), alongside biographies of painters.

It gives art historians an extremely important insight into art and art theory in China up until that point.

The Catalogue paintings into ten categories, which it lists in order of importance. This listing is revealing, as landscape painting is only listed sixth…

Its reasoning for this includes the following: 

且自唐至本朝，以画山水得名者，类非画家者流，而多出于缙绅士大夫。
From the Tang to present dynasty, famous landscape painters were not classed as painters, [because]they did not emerge from the ranks of the officials and scholars.

– Xuanhe Catalogue of Painting, chapter 10

The Southern Song period (1127 – 1279 AD)

The (retrospectively named) Southern Song period began in 1127, after the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty took over northern China and captured the recently-abdicated Huizong.

(Huizong would die in Jurchen captivity a decade later, was succeeded by his ninth son, Gaozong (r. 1127 – 1129)).

The remaining Song royal court fled south (‘crossing to the South’), to Hangzhou, which would soon after change its name to Lin’an. 

Thereafter, the Song empire was made up of only 16 provinces and had a population of 61.8 million.

However, for the next century and a half, despite the ongoing threat and uneasy truce with the Jin, it prospered economically and culturally.

Lin’an: A new and prosperous capital

Lin’an would be the dynasty’s capital until the Mongols arrived a century and a half later. It was perhaps the largest and most economically prosperous city in the world.

[Lin’an] was testimony to the genius of man and his ability to dominate the world he lives in. It was a concrete example of his ingenuity and perseverance. But there was also something essentially and peculiarly Chinese about it, of which this description may have provided a glimpse: the remarkable administrative organization behind it.

– Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion (1250 – 1276) (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1962), p. 55

Political and economic stability helped painting prosper once again.

Patronage from the imperial Academy of Painting and wealthy merchants created opportunities for painters.

Paintings on fans became popular, too. And landscape painting remained a prestigious and sought-after medium.

A new style gradually developed for painters in the Academy of Painting.

It almost merged with literati style paintings, except for its more sophisticated use of perspective and focus, something only trained painters excelled at.

Southern Song landscape painting trends

For its first few decades, the Southern Song continued with Northern Song landscape trends.

This was aided by the Imperial Academy, where legitimacy and continuity were natural concerns given the recent loss of territory to the Jin (and subsequent demeaning peace treaties them).

But after a few decades, this changed.

The monumental, nature-inspired landscapes the Northern Song is famous for gave way to the Southern Song’s speciality:

• Introspective/concerned with self-expression
• Abstract
• Evocative.

Busy detail – so popular in the Northern Song – was replaced by empty space or ‘voids’. And explicit forms by suggested ones.

Li Tang (1066 – 1150 AD)

Li Tang (李唐) lived and worked during the Northern Song period before escaping to the Southern Song court. He was said to have been kidnapped by bandits during his dramatic journey…

By Southern Song period, his style shows a distinct switch in styles from the Northern Song style painting.

Gaozong Emperor praised him for this, which marked a re-branding, if you will, of the official imperial style.

Li saw himself as part of the Fan Kuan lineage. His style featured sharper strokes and clearer outlines, but also maintained the use of perspective and mist.

Zhao Boju (died ca. 1162)

Zhao Boju (赵伯驹) was a relative of the Song imperial family (whose surname was also Zhao). 

Not a lot is known about him. And the authenticity of his most famous work, Autumn Colours over Streams and Mountains, has been questioned by art critics.

Xia Gui (active early 13^th century)

Xia Gui (夏圭) was an Academy of Painting member whose innovative style features radically simplified landscapes.

He skilfully used ink application to create objects obscured at different levels in mist and distance.

The ultimate effect of this was an almost minimalist style – were it not for the solid, skilfully rendered objects and people in the foreground.

He was active in court at the same time as Ma Yuan (below).

Together, a combining of their two names (‘Ma-Xia’) came to represent the distinct and bold style of southern Song landscapes pieces.

Li Jie (ca. 1124 – after 1191 AD)

Li Jie (李结) was born in Heyang (in today’s Henan Province) shortly before the Jin invasion of northern China.

He passed the imperial examination in the 1150s and began working as an official.

He painted his masterpiece, Fisherman’s Lodge at Mount Xisai, around the year 1170.

It depicts an imaged landscape (and building), in the style of Wang Wei’s Wangchuan Villa painting. It also uses the distinct Tang dynasty blue-and-green style of colouring.

Li’s home (the actual Fishing Lodge, based near Lake Tai, in today’s Jiangsu Province) had not been completed when he painted this. And not all of his friends, including those who added colophons for it, had seen it, either.

In fact, Li himself would only get to live there for a year before passed away in 1191.

But the salient point is that the etherial, dreamscape mode of painting here was central to the scholar ideal during the Southern Song period.

Li’s painting featured colophons several prominent contemporaries, including the great southern song official, poet and calligrapher Fan Chengda (1126 – 1193).

Fan’s colophon is given prominence as the one mounted directly next to the painting on its handscroll. Part of Fan’s comments read:

次山虽晚得渔社，而强健奉亲，时从板舆，徜徉胜地，称寿献觞，子孙满前，人生至乐，何以过此？
Although this fishing lodge was built late, [Li has] good health and filially supports his parents. 
   He sometimes travels in his mother’s carriage around scenic spots. In front of his children and grandchildren, he toasts to his mother with wine, wishing her a long and happy life. How happy can someone’s life be?! I am more envious [of Li] than vice versa!

– Fan Chengda, ‘Colophon to Fisherman’s Lodge at Mount Xisai‘ (1170 AD)

The Ma family

Professional painting was sometimes kept as a family trade.

This is just like the practice of elite families maintaining their status by giving their sons’ educations in order to become officials.

The Ma family of painters, originally from of Hezhong (Shanxi Province), are a good example of this.

Five generations of them served as court painters – this covers the late Northern Song and likely the entire Southern Song periods.

Ma Yuan (active ca. 1189 – 1225 AD)

When Ma Yuan (马远 [Mǎ Yuǎn]) became a court painter with the Academy of Painting, he was following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. 

The first distinguished Ma painter, Ma Fen, served under Huizong in the late Northern Song. But Ma Yuan is the most famous of his family.

He was follower of Li Tang’s style. He appears to have founded the type of landscape painting that featured scholars gazing out over scenery.

His paintings often feature clear, details foregrounds that frame distant, empty spaces. This earned him the nickname ‘One Corner Ma’ (马一角).

Richard Barnhart has pointed out that the above painting, scholar viewing a waterfall, could be inspired by lines from Li Bai (701 – 762 AD):

野竹分青霭，飞泉挂碧峰。
无人知所去，愁倚两三松。 
Wild bamboo splits bright clouds.
Mist hovers over green peaks.
Nobody knows where you have gone.
In my sadness, I’ve leaned against two or three pines.
–Li Bai, ‘On Visiting the Daoist Master at the Taitian Mountains and Not Finding Him’

Ma Lin (active ca. 1200 – 1250)

Ma Lin (马麟) was Ma Yuan’s son and the final Ma to paint for the Academy of Painting.

Many critics over the years have described him as basically living in his father’s shadow.

However, not all agree. For example, art critic James Cahill (1926 – 2014) wrote: 

Appraisals of Ma Lin by both Chinese and Western writers… [have often] dismissed him as a faded facsimile of Ma Yuan. But some things in his pictures suggest that the real Ma Lin, a more complex artistic personality than critics have recognized, has slipped away from them. 

– James Cahill, quoted in Chinese Painting (Ohio: The World Publishing Company, 1960) p. 84-5

Like his father, Ma Lin also tended towards landscapes with sparse, suggestive spaces and senses of distance. 

Even though he painted for the Academy of Painting, his painting tends towards literati painting in its simplicity and use of poetical references. 

For example, his Sunset Landscape features lines taken (almost verbatim) from ‘Accompanying Governor Wang Ming Boating’ by the Tang poet Liu Zhangqing (709 – 786 AD):

山含秋色近，
燕渡夕阳迟。
Mountains hold autumn’s colours close,
Birds cross the setting sun.

Chan Buddhist painting in the late Southern Song

Like most – if not all – sophisticated societies, the Southern Song had its spiritual side.

All three major strains of Chinese religious/philosophical thought (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) flourished.

Back in the Tang dynasty, Buddhism (which originated in India) had still been seen by some as essentially an alien religion. 

The prominent official and intellectual like Han Yu (768 – 824 AD) had famously written a polemic against Buddhism (which got him exiled and nearly executed).

However, by the Song, Buddhism in China had been sinicised into Chan Buddhism (which in turn inspired the creation of Japan’s Zen Buddhism).

It was still opposed by some (Huizong and Zhu Xi had both been anti-Buddhist). But it was also supported by almost all Song emperors and managed to grow:

In the year 1221 there were 400,000 [Buddhist] monks and 61,000 nuns in the dynasty, compared with a total of 260,000 monks and nuns registered in 845. Ordained clerics made up less than 1 percent of the Song population, but their influence on the religious life of all Chinese far outweighed their minority status.

– Dieter Kuhn, The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China (Harvard: The Belknap Press, 2009), p. 109

In Buddhist monasteries around Hangzhou, monks created landscape paintings that looked remarkably similar to both paintings by the literati Academy of Painting.

And like those other groups of painters, the Chan Buddhists painted in various genres, including landscapes.

Their paintings survive largely thanks to having been taken to Japan.

The Jin Dynasty (1115 – 1234)

The Jin dynasty was run by Jurchens, who would later rename themselves the Manchu and rule China’s last empire, the Qing (1644 – 1911 AD). 

The Jin had a population of 44.7 million, made up of 4 million ruling Jurchens, 40 million Han, 4 million Jurchen, approximately 700,000 Khitans and Bohai.

Chinese culture influenced by the Northern Song dynasty pervaded the Jin.

The Jin emperors retained paintings captured from the Northern Song collection and gave patronage to their own court painters.

However, in general, only several paintings from the Jin exist today – in contrast to several hundred paintings from the Southern Song.

One of these Jin paintings is Li Shan’s (李山) (ca. late 12^th early 13^th centuries) Snowstorm over Pines and Firs.

Song dynasty landscape painting’s Place in Song culture

Painting was long seen as below calligraphy and poetry in China. 

All three arts were done with the same tools (brush, paper, ink), hence their close association.

However, elite Song society was a literary one.

Calligraphy was no longer judged for the imperial exams. But it was still highly prestigious throughout most the Song.

And throughout most of Chinese history, the Academy of Calligraphy members held higher statuses (and higher privileges, including pay) than Academy of Painting members.

The raising status of painters

For most of the first half of the Song dynasty, professional painters in the palace worked in the Painting Academy, established in 984 AD.

For its first 14 years, it was placed in the inner court of the palace. But in 998 it was moved to the outer court, which signalled its loss of status.

Throughout this period, painters at the Academy were considered artisans and were under the control and instruction of palace eunuchs. 

It was briefly moved back to the inner court during Shenzong’s (r. 1067 – 85). And then back to the outer court until five years after Huizong (r. 1100 – 1126) came to power. 

Huizong, himself a famously keen painter and calligrapher, made a concerted attempt to raise the societal status of painters.

He created a new Institute of Painting (along with three other institutes, for medicine, mathematics, and calligraphy). 

Members were not only allowed to wear official purple robes (as before), but now also the fish pouches of officials and were given official salaries.

Landscape painting was one of the six categories painters of the Institute could specialise in (the others were: Buddhist and Daoist themes, human figures, birds and animals, plants and flowers, and architecture.)

Some of the painters were even enrolled in an academic programme to increase their ability to explore more learned subjects.

However, these reforms did not last long. By the time the royal court was re-established in Lin’an (today’s Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province) in the 1130s, their status had returned to that of artisans.

Sponsorship of the Painting Academy continued throughout the second half of the Song dynasty, and individual artists achieved great favour with emperors. 

But overall, the relative status of artists never again reached the level it achieved under Huizong.

Landscape painting and poetry

Landscape painting is said to have first become associated with poetry with the Tang dynasty poet and painter Wang Wei (ca. 701 – 761 AD).

Su Shi (1037 – 1101 AD) famously said of Wang:

味摩诘之诗，诗中有画；观摩诘之画，画中有诗。
When savouring Wang Wei’s poems, there’s a painting within; 
When viewing Wang Wei’s paintings, there’s a poem within.

– Su Shi, colophon, ‘Written on a painting by Wang Wei: Misty Rain over Lantian’

The surviving copies of Wang’s work are likely copies by later painters. 

However, in his poetry, it’s easy to see the anticipation of later landscape painting themes.

Here, the theme of mountains as a source of truth and contemplation is clear. Northern Song landscape painting built upon this visually. 

In 740, Wang Wei had acquired an estate, the Wang Chuan Villa. He illustrated the grounds of it with wall paintings and accompanying poems. 

This trend re-emerged during the Southern Song period, when painters often sought to capture the precision of selected couplets in a single moment

Later revivals of Song dynasty landscape styles

The Song dynasty was officially ended in 1279. It was replaced by the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty (1271 – 1368 AD).

As the Mongol army approached, a Song military commander grabbed the child-emperor Bing and jumped off a cliff, killing them both.

Yuan dynasty landscape painting was heavily influenced by a revival of some Northern Song landscape painting styles and idioms.

This was led by the statesman and artist Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322 AD), who was joined by others such the Four Great Masters of Yuan Dynasty Painting:

• Huang Gongwang (1269 – 1354)
• Wu Zhen (1280 – 1354)
• Ni Zan (1301 – 1374)
• Wang Meng (1308 – 1385).

Like other artists and elite audiences, Zhao now had access to art from across the entire Chinese empire.

He set out to revive and unify styles of painting and calligraphy that had been split by the Song dynasty’s break up back in 1126.

Many other Yuan painters followed in incorporating aspects of past painting masters into their works.

More broadly, Zhao also simultaneously promoted Song literati painting. The unity between calligraphy, painting and poetry grew closer.

Abstract, almost avant-garde paintings started featuring poems on them. Symbolic self-expression became more important than realistic representation – the former a trend with roots in the Southern Song.

A second and more comprehensive revival of monumental Northern Song landscape paintings took place in the subsequent Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644 AD).

As a Han Chinese-ruled dynasty, the Ming saw themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Song. So, their emperors often gave patronage to artists just as the Song emperors had.

One example of this revival in style is the work of Li Zai (? – 1431 AD).

Finally, during the early Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911), artists such as Wang Hui brought about a third major revival of Song landscape styles.