The roots of traditional Chinese painting reach back to China’s distant history. Ordinarily, works dating from prior to the T’ang dynasty are mainly line drawings of people engaged from a variety of activities, this was this golden age of human body drawing. By the mid-T’ang dynasty, landscape and flowers and bird paintings started their rise to prominence. Paintings of mountains, woods, fields, and gardens possess the ability to transfer one from this vexations of this material world to a peaceful, carefree realm. Due to this, landscape paintings have always been extremely regarded by China’s literati and officialdom. The flowers, grass.
Trees. Stones, and birds together with other creatures depicted from the lively and filled with energy flower and bird paintings will also be widely admired. Thus the landscape and flowers and bird kinds of painting, together with the preceding human figure painting, comprise the 3 main classes of traditional Chinese painting. The judgment also elite classes of the T’ang also Sung dynasties were important supporters of Chinese painting. The creative purpose behind artistic works generated on this period was serious, and had educational and political importance, in fashion, the functions tended to be complicated and ornate. The Sung dynasty court established a rather well systematized academy of painting.
Sung Emperor Hui Tsung, a fan of fine arts also painting, also an accomplished artist from his own right, given special patronage into this painters in this academy, and sponsored this practice of painters. The academy of painting reached this zenith of its activity on this period. Nevertheless, because of gradual, social, economic, also cultural changes, increasingly more men of letters started to take up painting, also literature came to practice an increasing influence on painting. By this time of this famous Sung poet Su Shih, this school of literary painting had already emerged. By the Mongol Yuan dynasty, there was no longer an official painting academy organization inside the imperial palace, so the court fashion of painting declined.
At this stage, this literati school of painting entered this mainstream, and this leadership in Chinese painting circles fell to the hands of literati painters. Literati typically prefer to paint based on their very own fancy and without limitation, also advocate a fresh, free, understated, also elegant fashion. Subject matter they’re fond of includes mountains also rocks, clouds also water, flowers also trees, the four gentlemen, and so forth. Since natural objects like these are somewhat less demanding subjects to paint than the human figure, the painter can better exploit the brush and ink’s potential for free expression. Whether Chinese painting is realistic is this subject of frequent debate. Some might feel that it’s not realistic, but such an answer tells only part of this story.