Ancient Chinese Painting | Traditional Chinese Drawing | Guó Huà

Chinese painting is generally called danqing, mainly painted on silk, paper and mounted scroll painting, referred to as “Chinese painting”. It is a painting created with special Chinese brush, ink, and pigment in accordance with long-term forms of expression and artistic rules. As a country with a long history and rich culture, China embraces a glories painting history, marvelous paintings, and excellent painters.

Six Principles of the Ancient Chinese Painting

The six principles of the ancient Chinese painting was put forward by Xie He, a famous art historian in the 5th century. The six principles were spirit resonance, correspondence to the object, suitability to type, division and planning, transmission by copying, and bone method. The bone method was the way of using the brush to show the painter’s personality.

Classification of Chinese Painting

Based on painting style, painting content, and painting skills, traditional Chinese painting has a variety of classification methods. Based on the content of Chinese painting, there are six main forms of traditional Chinese painting: flower and bird painting; Fish, insect and beast paintings; Landscape painting; Genre painting. Figure painting; Palace painting. Also according to painting techniques, Chinese painting can be divided into two types: xieyi painting and gongbi painting. Xieyi, or freehand, is featured of exaggerated forms and freehand brushwork. Gongbi, or meticulous, is characterized by fine processing details and fine brushwork.

Famous Chinese Painters

In the past thousands of years, there are many outstanding Chinese painters. They all contribute to the development of Chinese painting with their unique styles and innovative spirit. The following are some well-known figures in the field of painting.

• Qi Baishi, the former president of the China Artists Association, was famous for his watercolor works. His painting subjects almost cover everything, animals, figures, scenery, and plants. Qi Baishi once said, “paintings must be something between likeness and unlikeness, much like today’s vulgarians, but not like to cheat popular people.”
• Xu Beihong is known for Chinese ink paintings of horses and birds. He was also one of the first Chinese artists to express modern China. Besides the Chinese painting techniques, Xu also had a good command of Western painting techniques.
• As the pioneer of the modern Chinese art painting, Liu Haisu excelled in Chinese painting. In 1929, he visited many European countries and talked about painting with Picasso, Matisse, and other painters. He is also the leader of Chinese painting.

Representational Chinese Paintings

• Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival (《清明上河图》) “Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival” is a panoramic painting by Zhang Zeduan, an artist from the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). This painting mainly depicts rich and poor people’s lives at that time, which is a treasure of painting history.
• Nymph of the Luo River (《洛神赋图》) The origin of the painting “Nymph of the Luo River” comes from a romantic poem by Cao Zhi from the state of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period. This painting depicts the meeting and the eventual separation of Cao Zhi and the Nymph of the Luo River. As one of the most important Chinese artworks, “Nymph of the Luo River” representing the beginning of the development of Chinese landscape paintings.

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