Nature and Spirit in Masterpieces of Chinese Painting

The text below is the excerpt of the book Chinese Art (ISBN: 9781783106998), written by Stephen W. Bushell, published by Parkstone International.

In the study of Chinese painting, the westerner must forget his own preconceptions and discard his artistic education, critical tradition, and all the aesthetic baggage that he has accumulated from the Renaissance to the present. He must specially refrain from comparing the works of Chinese painters with any of the famous canvases which cover the walls of western collections, public or private.

The Chinese point of view differs essentially from that of the occidental, and the wide abyss which divides them is demonstrated by the story of the two Jesuits, the Pères Attiret and Castiglione, who were attached as painters to the Imperial Court early in the eighteenth century. They tried hard to make the Chinese accept European art, with its science of anatomy, its modelling, and its effects of light and shade. Astonished at first, the emperor let them go on, and they painted portraits of him, the empress, the princes of the blood, and many high mandarins of the court, then decorated the palace with allegorical pictures of the four seasons and finished more than two hundred pictures altogether. However, after some time, a singular change came over the spirit of the emperor, and, therefore, of the court.

The style of the Jesuit fathers was found to be too European; the modelling of the flesh tints, the chiaroscuro, and the projection of the shadows were declared to be shocking to Chinese eyes. The emperor afterwards imposed on the missionaries the traditional routine of Chinese painting, and even forced on them Chinese collaborators, until the Père Attiret wrote to Paris on November 1st, 1743, saying:

“ ll m’a fallu oublier, pour ainsi dire, tout ce que j’avais appris et me faire une nouvelle manière pour me conformer au goût de la nation… Tout ce que nous peignons est ordonné par l’empereur. Nous faisons d’abord les dessins ; il les voit, les fait changer, reformer comme bon lui semble. Que la correction soit bien ou mal, il faut passer par là sans oser rien dire.”

– (Lettres édifiantes.)

When Lord McCartney came to the court of the same emperor some fifty years later, bringing with him several pictures as presents from George III, the mandarins-in-waiting were again shocked by the shadows, and they asked gravely if the originals of the portraits really had one side of the face darker than the other: the shaded nose was a grave defect to their eyes, and some of them even believed that it had appeared in the paintings accidentally.

Throughout the development of Chinese painting in its succession of epochs and phases, amid a great variety of styles and different schools, it is possible to detect from the earliest times a certain unity and harmonious arrangement of details, prompted by a kind of instinctive accord among the artists in their manner of interpreting the material properties of things and living beings, so that they always seize the essential points to express the sensations and ideas brought to their minds, and translate, so to speak, a kind of inner vision which they have idealised. Among the most striking characteristics of Chinese paintings, and the trait which has prevailed most strongly throughout its long historical evolution, is the graphic quality of the painting: Chinese painters are, first of all, draughtsmen and calligraphists.

Chinese script, in fact, was originally ideographic, the earliest characters having been more or less exact reproductions of objects. The phonetic element was not adopted until much later, in the same natural course of development which analogous scripts have undergone in other parts of the world.

This is indicated by the name of wên, “picture of the object,” given to the primitive characters, which are said traditionally to have been invented by Ts’ang-hsieh, and to have replaced the knotted cords and notched tallies, like the quippus of the ancient Peruvians, previously used for recording events.

The reputed inventor of painting in the mythical period of antiquity was Shih-huang, a contemporary of Ts’ang-hsieh, and like him a titular minister of the legendary Huang Ti, the “Yellow Emperor“ of Chinese mythology. Some mythologists apply the two names to the same personage, who is supposed to have reigned as an emperor in succession to Fu-Hsi. The different legends all carry out the leading idea of the common origin and essential unity of writing and painting, and this unity is constantly insisted upon by Chinese critics of the two arts.

The picturesque nature of Chinese writing, which persists even in the modern script, demands of learners who wish to excel in its practice a similar education and course of study of eye and hand as are required of draughtsmen.

The strokes of the ordinary characters are replete indeed with light and supple touches, sudden stops, graceful curves, waxing energies, and gradually waning lines, qualities only a long apprenticeship to the brush could bring to the art. The Chinese scholar is firmly convinced that the characters of a perfect writer lend something of their graphic beauty to the ideas they express, and give a delicate intrinsic shade of meaning to every thought enshrined in them.

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