Chinese artists sought to capture something more than the tangible world in watercolours... giving their paintings an alluring ethereal quality Spiritual works
WHO invented painting? Simple: cavemen, of course, although when they were daubing the walls of their shelters 40,000 or more years ago, they probably didn’t realise it.
So who invented artistic painting with watercolours? Quick clue: lucky enough to visit Beijing, the Business Manager (Mrs P) and I were being shown around the Summer Palace.
In one of the long corridors open to the sumptuous gardens were locals playing chess, go and other board games, practising tai chi and even couples dancing as if in a ballroom, despite having no music to follow.
One man stood out though. He was carrying a bamboo pot of water in one hand and a wooden brush in the other, as long as a golf club with a thick head of bristles.
Walking backwards along the corridor, he was practising “artistic writing” or calligraphy on the floor. It seemed to matter not a jot that what he had painted moments ago had dried in the sweltering atmosphere, he was happily engaged in an ancient and scholarly skill that recalled where it all started as far back as the 13th century BC.
Calligraphy, which used only black ink, was regarded as the highest and purest form of Chinese painting. By the time of the Tang dynasty (618907) scholar-artists began to embrace “mountain-water paintings”, pictures we in the West call landscapes.
These were imaginary views in which the artist strives to capture the “ch’i” – the life-spirit of the subject – and his meditation to appreciate nature, not simply attempting to capture what he sees.
The “Six Principles” of successful Chinese watercolour painting were set out by scholar Xie He in about 550AD, while a later landscape artist, Jing Hao (855-915) said that to copy a view neglects its spirit.
He wrote: “He who tries to transmit the spirit by the means of formal aspect and ends by merely obtaining the outward appearance will produce a dead thing.”
The latter’s theories on art provided the foundation for what was to follow in the Song, Yan and Ming dynasties.
Capturing the “spirit” of a landscape is no easy matter and every brushstroke counts.
The Chinese watercolourist’s brush
is different from those used by Western artists. Harder, which makes it more difficult to control, it is capable of producing a greater number of effects, dependant on the amount of paint and varying angle and pressure during application.
Speed and spontaneity is what every artist hopes to achieve, but self-discipline and a devotion to seeking perfection can take a lifetime. Classical Chinese paintings are naturally highly treasured and rare, but traditional painters learned
their craft by copying earlier masters.
Consequently, it can be extremely difficult to distinguish an original from a copy, especially if the work is very old, which is one of the reasons why so many works offered in the saleroom are catalogued simply as “Chinese School”.
By far the easiest approach is to purchase a work that has a direct connection to the artist who made it.
Such an example was a river landscape with arched bridge and trees, signed by Zhao Shao’Ang
(1905-1998) which had been purchased by an RAF officer while stationed in the Chinese Air Force staff college in Chengdu in Sichuan Province. He purchased it directly from the artist who was staging a selling exhibition in the town.
The officer returned to the UK in 1945 bringing the picture with him.
Passed down through his family, it was sold subsequently by them for £19,000. It had been estimated at £800-1,200.
Landscapes are just one element. Carefully painted and highly detailed flower studies, often concentrating on a single species, are also extremely decorative and collectable.
Portraits of legendary sages, scholars and scenes from their lives were recorded by watercolourists as were emperors, their retinues and the officials and scholars who comprised the various courts that ruled the country. Such works are significant in terms of social history.
The West “discovered” Chinese watercolours only when the country was opened to foreign trade in the mid-19th century.
A particular school of artists responded to the rising demand from European travellers for souvenirs to take home by producing “export paintings” in a style more recognisable to Western eyes.
Whole albums full of vibrantly coloured paintings were made specially for foreign buyers. They featured topographical views or domestic interiors with children playing or servants waiting on their masters, all oddly portrayed with Westernised facial features.
According to a glossy interior design magazine I thumbed through in the dentist’s the other day, oriental art is currently on trend. Take a look in the saleroom: in my opinion Chinese watercolours are currently under-valued.
He who tries to transmit the spirit by the means of formal aspect and ends by merely obtaining the outward appearance will produce a dead thing.
Artist Jing Hao (855-915)