The relatively brief Yuan dynasty (1279 – 1368 AD) occupies a unique place in Chinese history.
It lasted less than a century, but its influence was deep and enduring.
In some ways, it was brutally oppressive. But in others, it was surprisingly tolerant.
And in its period of less than a century, Chinese landscape painting – like the nation itself – changed in many surprising ways, too.
Contents
Background
Unifying & disrupting Chinese culture
The Yuan dynasty was the first time China had been fully ruled by a foreign power.
The Mongols’ violent and rapid rise had disrupted the Chinese way of life in many ways.
They limited how many Chinese could work in government and famously ended the imperial examination system between 1379 – 1315. They also imposed heavy taxes on the population.
However, in other ways, their rule was not as oppressive as their rise.
(In part thanks to non-Mongol advisers such as Yelü Chucai (1190 – 1244), who famously argued that taxing Chinese subjects was more efficient than slaughtering them.)
They were highly tolerant of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, for example.
And they had also unified China after over 250 years of separation between the Southern Song (1127 – 1379) and Jin (1115 – 1234) dynasties.
Artistic flourishing
During the Yuan, many of the Chinese arts flourished.
The period is best known for its drama. But Yuan dynasty calligraphy and poetry were highly accomplished, too.
And according to art historian James Cahill (1926 – 2014):
Painting, in particular, underwent a major revolution, the most decisive in all its history; post-Yüan painting was never to resemble very closely, except through deliberate imitation, anything done before the year 1300. Understanding the achievements of the Yüan masters, then, is as crucial to the study of later Chinese painting as is understanding the Renaissance to the study of European painting.
Cahill, James Francis, Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279 – 1368 (New York: John Weatherhill, Inc, 1976), p. 3
This revolution was built on a combination of the achievements of centuries of artistic progress and new networks of artists’ circles and patronage.
It famously saw the development of the combining of painting, calligraphy, and poetry that Chinese painting is known for today.
(Before the Yuan, this trend had appeared in various forms. But afterwards, it became the norm.)
The emergence of Yuan literati painting
The Yuan brought about a loss of key institutions and networks of patronage for painters (and other scholars).
A new class of Chinese literati (文人) (sometimes translated as free or independent scholars) emerged as result
This is the most significant aspect Mongol rule had on the Chinese arts.
Yuan literati were essentially independent, full-time painters, calligraphers and poets who sold or ‘gifted’ (exchanged for nonmonetary possessions or benefits) their work to clients and patrons.
Their origins can be traced through the preceding centuries, especially Northern Song scholar-official (士大夫) art.
However, it wasn’t until the Yuan that their main characteristics appeared.
Unlike Song scholar-official artists, Yuan literati were not primarily concerned with the political and philosophical issues of the day.
In fact, their disassociation from these were a measure of how independent they were.
And they were not expected to maintain the serious, conformist composure of a statesman. Instead, their eccentricity and unworldliness were celebrated.
They were more directly focused on past artistic trends than present political realities.
For example, poets often looked towards the Tang dynasty for poetic models (rather than the Song).
And painters preferred studying the Northern Song dynasty landscape painting and even earlier Five dynasties landscape tradition (and earlier) over more recent works.
Yuan Landscape painting overview
Early Yuan period
At the beginning of the Yuan period, the Southern Song styles were still in vogue amongst artists.
However, within decades, the most important artistic figure arrived: Zhao Mengfu (see below).
Zhao laid firm foundations for a totally new manner of landscape painting, deeply grounded in Tang and Northern Song precedents.
His work was helped by access to large collections of paintings from across the recently disunited empire. And by his friendships and discussions with other leading artists.
‘Leftover subjects’ (yímín)
Leftover subjects (遗民) were those that refused to collaborate with – or participate in – the Mongol state.
They were largely guided by the principle of loyalty to the fallen Song dynasty.
Several important landscape painters could be counted amongst their ranks.
Many retreated lived in relative poverty, disconnected from the established networks of patronage and commercial income available during the Southern Song.
Qian Xuan (ca. 1239 – 1299)
Qian Xuan (钱选), courtesy name Shun Ju, was the most famous leftover subject painter of the Yuan dynasty.
He was from Wuxing (today a part of Huzhou, Zhejiang Province), close by and between the commercial city of Suzhou and Southern Song capital Lin’an (today’s Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province).
He painted in several genres, including flowers, figures and landscapes.
Despite being a quintessentially literati (i.e., educated, non-commercial) artist, his technical painting skill was as advanced as professional, artisan ones.
He passed the imperial examination in the 1260, but unusually seems not to have accepted an official position soon afterwards.
In the meantime, he became known as one of the ‘Eight Talents of Wuxing’ (吴兴八俊), a group of painters that also included Zhao Mengfu (see below).
When the Mongols came to power, Qian would have been around 40 years old. And by the time they started recruiting amongst the southern Chinese elite, he was fifty.
Qian declined the chance to work for the Mongols. Later writers ascribed this to his loyalty to the fallen Song dynasty, but his age and former avoidance of official work might be explanations.
Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322)
Zhao Mengfu is the most significant artistic figure of the Yuan dynasty.
He was a distant descendent of the Song royal family. To many contemporaries and later historians, this made his decision to work for the Mongols controversial.
Zhao himself seemed troubled by the decision throughout his career, too.
In the The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu (painted in the 1280s), Zhao depicts the Eastern Jin official Xie Youyu (280 – 322 AD).
Xie could emotionally detach himself from his official duties by retaining his ‘mind of the mountains and valleys’.
Zhao’s use of the Tang dynasty blue-and-green landscape idiom further detaches the story from the present (helping distance himself from direct readings of displeasure at working for the Mongols).
Whilst this painting exemplifies Zhao’s political predicament, it also embodies many of his transformative themes.
Zhao’s harking back to older styles was both a result of and reaction to Mongol rule.
Access to the past
Zhao was able to access a broader range of paintings in the Yuan dynasty than were available in the non-unified Southern Song dynasty.
And as an official, his access was above that of most others, including leftover subjects.
The Mongols had brought back many collections of art back to the imperial capital in Dadu (today’s Beijing).
Zhao was also able to travel across the empire in his role as a high official. So, he could both visit different collectors and use his good salary to build up his personal collection.
Preserving and unifying the past
Zhao’s emphasise on the study of past styles both helped preserve and develop landscape traditions.
In Autumn Colours on the Qiao and Hua Mountains (1296), he used the southern Chinese ‘earthen’ idiom associated with Dong Yuan (d. 962 AD) to depict northern Chinese scenery.
The painting also references a painting by Tang dynasty poet and painter Wang Wei (ca. 701 – 761 AD), Wangchuan Villa.
Implicit in these combinations of older painting styles and themes was a subtle rejection of Southern Song landscape painting.
Unifying calligraphy and painting
One of Zhao’s most transformative innovations in the landscape genre was its integration with calligraphic styles.
For example, in The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu he uses ancient seal script calligraphy brushstrokes into the outlines of trees and rocks in the painting.
The use of this archaic style further emphasises the richness and depth of inherited past traditions in Han Chinese culture.
In a colophon poem written in 1310, Zhao summarised his methods:
石如飞白木如籀
Zhao Mengfu, ‘Colophon (1310)’
写竹还于八法通
若也有人能会此
方知书画本来同
Rocks like flying-white [script], trees like seal [script].
Painting bamboo with the spreading-eight [later clerical] method.
Those who grasp this know that calligraphy and painting have the same origin.
The late Yuan period
The late Yuan period was beset by famine and rebellions. This instability culminated in the Mongols being expelled by Zhu Yuanzhang’s (aka Hongwu, the first Ming emperor) peasant army.
This left many painters with a relatively uncertain prospects and a small audience.
Most of the great landscape painters from this period were based in and around Suzhou (in today’s Jiangsu Province). Many Chinese elites flocked here.
Despite being (from around 1356) the headquarters of rebel forces that would eventually overthrow the Mongols, the city enjoyed relatively peaceful and stable conditions.
Landscape paintings from this period don’t reflect the wider national turmoil. A viewer unaware of the context they were created in would almost certainly never guess it.
Artists seem to have withdrawn into an inner state of tranquility and aloofness from the times. Richard M. Barnhart summarises it vividly:
Nothing of the fear, uncertainty, or anguish of the scholars of Soochow [Suzhou] can directly be seen. It is this absence of violence that, finally, lends them a quality beyond the beautiful. Knowing what we do of the painters and the poets who wrote on the paintings, of their lives in the lovely, doomed city of Soochow, and of their tragic deaths, we can look at the paintings as images of the artists themselves. Their art represents a kind of paradise lost, and their dream is recognizable as a dream.
-Barnhart, Richard M., Along the Border of Heaven: Sung and Yüan Paintings from the C. C. Wang Family Collection (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983), p. 148
The tragic deaths Barnhart referred to were the mass purges that the first Ming Emperor (who controlled Suzhou) carried out. These began before the Mongols had even been completely expelled from China.
The early Ming period would be defined by this brutally oppressive rule. Meanwhile, landscape painting, like the nature it depicted, continued on in ways shaped during the Yuan period.
The Four Great Masters of the Late Yuan
Huang Gongwang (1269 – 1354)
Huang Gongwang was from in Changshu (in today’s Jiangsu Province), near Suzhou, near the end of the Southern Song period.
He worked briefly as a low-level official under the Mongols before being imprisoned for what appears to have been an investigation into tax irregularities.
Thereafter, he made a living as a diviner and painter. He wore Daoist robes and eventually lived as a hermit in mountains west of Hangzhou.
Huang’s innovated with spatial positioning of objects in his landscape painting.
In his remaining 5 surviving paintings, his rich brushwork often builds up sophisticated forms of trees, mountains, and vegetation between suggestive blank spaces of mist and water.
Despite (and because of) his hermit lifestyle, Huang was well-known during his life time. He likely knew Zhao Mengfu and Ni Zan (see below).
And his Secrets of Landscape Painting, a collection of largely practical statements on the art, was influential.
10. 山水中用笔法。谓之筋骨相连。有笔有墨之分。用描处糊突其笔。谓之有墨。水笔不动描法。谓之有笔。此画家紧要处。山石树木皆用此。Using brush method in landscape painting is called ‘continuity of sinew and bone.’ It is distinguished between having ink and having brush. To blur over brushwork in places where there is drawing is called having ink. When the water brush [used for applying washes] doesn’t intrude on the drawing, this is called ‘having brush’. These are very important matters for painters. They apply to mountains, rocks, trees and wood.
Huang Gongwang, Secrets of Landscape Painting
Wu Zhen (1280 – 1354)
Wu Zhen was from Jiashan (today’s Jiashan County, Zhejiang Province), about 56 miles (/90km) south of Suzhou at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty.
His was a typically eccentric Yuan literati. He was an expert swordsman and recluse who earned his living, like Huang Gongwang, as a diviner.
Despite his brilliance as a painter of landscapes he does not appear to have made any money from it.
Clues as to why this is come in several forms.
For example, he appears to have been particularly detached from his times. In his cursive script inscription on his painting Crooked Pine, he misidentified the reign year he was living under.
And he often referred to his paintings as ‘ink play’ (墨戏), suggesting he his lack of reverence for his own work.
Viewers of his landscapes can often intuitively understand that his notion of ‘ink play’ has a slightly self-effacing meaning.
Whilst there is a quality of free, spontaneous energy throughout his work, there is also a deep sense of atmosphere and focus.
Much like the cursive script he sometimes inscribed his paintings with, Wu’s style is based on a study of past styles.
For example, Clear River, Spring Dawn consciously echoes the Northern Song painter Dong Yuan’s rounded mountains created with soft hemp-fiber textured strokes and outlines.
Ni Zan (1301 – 1374)
Ni Zan was a famously eccentric painter from a wealthy landowning family in Wuxi (Jiangsu Province).
He led a privileged lifestyle until his late twenties, spending his time focusing on practicing poetry, calligraphy and painting.
But he became the head of the household just as his family’s land was subject to heavy Mongol taxes.
Thereafter he led a life of poverty. He drifted (often on a houseboat) between friends and potential patrons in the lower Yangtze delta area, repaying their hospitality with calligraphy and paintings.
Ni’s landscapes are recognisable for their distinctly sparse and liminal atmospheres.
They are often permeated with blank space and populated with empty pavilions, waterways and hills.
This characteristic was is often referred to as pingdan (平淡) (‘plainness’ or ‘blandness’), a term that in Chinese carries lofty rather than negative connotations.
He combined this with his drive (especially later in his career) towards achieving ‘non-likeness’ (or ‘non-resemblance’) (不似). This concept had had long been popular amongst scholar-official and literati painters.
Ni was a keen adherent of Dong Yuan’s (d. 962 AD) ‘Jiangnan’ (Lower Yangtze Delta region) style of landscape painting.
Despite the sharp, hard lines features in trees and rocks (which matched well with his calligraphy), he also made good use of soft, earthen hills and mountains.
Ni Zan’s bleak, almost barren landscape manner was carried on by many later artists. A counter lineage can be found in the work and manner of Wang Meng.
Wang Meng (ca. 1308 – 1385)
Wang Meng was Zhao Mengfu’s grandson (on Wang’s maternal side) and knew both Huang Gongwang and Ni Zan.
(Huang declared Wang a worthy heir to his grandafather’s achievements and Ni famously stated that the strength of Wang’s brush could lift up a bronze tripod.)
Wang was around 14 years old when Zhao died, but lived in the same city, Wuxing (today’s Huzhou, Zhejiang Province).
So, he was likely exposed to at least some of his famous relative’s instruction on painting and other arts.
The first part of his brief official career was halted by anti-Mongol uprisings.
Thereafter, he retreated to the mountains and often signed his paintings as ‘The Yellow Crane Mountain Woodcutter’ (黄鹤山樵).
Wang’s landscape style was heavily influenced by both his grandfather and the Dong-Ju lineage.
His surviving landscapes make use of classically shaped mountains (with parallel outlines of smaller mountains) and dense, overlapping vegetation.
These effects are carried out with evenly textured brushstrokes broken up by empty spaces for water.
Wang’s rich, dense style gave birth to a popular style of landscape painting in the following centuries.
Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains (1366)
Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains is considered by many to be Wang’s most original masterpiece.
It clearly channels aspects of both the Dong-Ju lineage as well as the work of Guo Xi.
It’s surreal perspective forces viewers to raise their eyes up along an otherworldly mountain shape that seems to swirl and sway along with the wind.
When the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644) came to power, he resumed his career as a prefect in Taian (today’s Zhizhou, Shandong Province).
However, like so many other politicians, painters, calligraphers, and more, he fell afoul of the Hongwu Emperor’s intense paranoia.
He died in prison in 1385, under suspicion for having met the former prime minister at a gathering for looking at paintings.
Fang Congyi (ca. 1302 – ca. 1398)
Fang Congyi, who went by the name Fang Hu (‘Square Pot’), was a Daoist priest and teacher originally from Guixi (in today’s Jiangxi Province).
Fang spent his life living in monasteries, but still managed to gain the respect of many artists and art lovers.
He often painted in the style of Mi Fu (1051 – 1107 AD) and Gao Kekong (1248 – 1310 AD), relying on dots, and light ink washes to create features (as opposed to distinct strokes).