Dong Yuan and the Chinese Paintings

Chinese Paintings

Dong Yuan learned from his ancestor masters how to perfect the ancient Chinese art of poetry inscriptions or literally allusions on illustrations using the finest calligraphy and also special seals. Every detail on Chinese art is significant and meaningful, the poetry talks about the feelings and deep emotions of the artist and the seal can be just a signature or even a dedicatory to whom the work would be given, could be a connection with the work, a symbol of the artist or just a mystery. The seal most of the times wasn't drawn on paper but rather craved in stone, dipped in ink and stamped. The craved stone would be pressed into a tin of cinnabar paste what would give the scarlet color as result, that paste is made of mercuric oxide, oils and ground silk, need to be done carefully, the ink of the stamp is permanent. As the early paintings were monochromatic black and white the scarlet red stamp was said to be "adding an eye to the dragon". 

We are situated at the Tang Dynasty and an artist called Wang Wei invented how to apply color to the black and white shaded paintings. "Ink and wash painting" grew in popularity. The masters of the practice of the calligraphy came to become Ink and Wash painters just needed to typically grind their own ink using an ink stick and a grinding stone. Ink sticks are usually composed of densely packed charcoal ash from bamboo or pine soot mixed with glue extracted from fish bones. Brushes can be made from goat hair, ox, horse, sheep, rabbit, marten, badger, deer, boar or wolf hair. The hair is tapered to a fine point, an essential requirement in Wash painting.

As in oil painting, different brushes have different qualities. A small wolf-hair brush that is tapered to a fine point can deliver an even thin line of ink (much like a pen), whereas a wide wool brush can deliver a large amount of water and ink. Once a brushstroke is made, it cannot be changed or erased. This makes Wash painting a particularly demanding art-form which requires years of training.

In ink-and-wash paintings, the bright red seal adds a final touch of beauty.  When preparing the inscription and seal, therefore, the Chinese painter, in addition to considering their content, has always given great thought to the placement, length and dimensions of the inscription and the position of the seal on the painting.

The Chinese original paper (around 100 AD.) was made from many different materials including pulp, old fishing nets and bark. Modern paper is often machine made. It is classed in degrees of weight and amount of the used size. The paper is very absorbent and the size of it will dictate the quantity of ink used for strokes on the paper. Different paper produce different results; some are rough and absorb ink quickly like a sponge, others have a smooth surface which resists ink. Chinese paper is usually known as rice paper in English.

Before painting on silk, the silk should be treated with alum and glue.  This method makes the silk less absorbent than paper. Brushstroke is best shown on paper. Because of this reason and the paper's variety of texture and finish, paper quickly became favored by artists and calligraphers. Remember: calligraphy is essentially a linear art, once on paper the brushstrokes cannot be erased or corrected, so a painter must have a complete mental concept of the painting before even lifting the brush.

There are differences in the use of color between Chinese painting and modern western painting. Chinese painting aim is not to express the various shades of color of the subject in relation to a fixed source of light, but to express the characteristics of the different subjects. 

For example, the adding of traces of brown or green to rocks, trees, leaves, grass and moss in a painting is used to reinforce the feeling of a particular season or state of the weather.

To understand the processes we can't forget the ink. Ink has been used in calligraphy and painting for over two thousand years.  When the ink cake is ground on the painter's stone slab with fresh water, ink of various consistencies can be prepared depending on the amount of water used.  Thick ink is very deep and glossy when applied to paper or silk.  Thin ink appears lively and translucent.  As a result, in ink-and-wash paintings it is possible to use ink alone to create a rhythmic balance between brightness and darkness, and density and lightness, and to create an impression of the subject's texture, weight and coloring just controlling the amount of water.

The brush could be:

• Brush with hairs of goat: Yang Hao. Very flexible, it is generally used to paint great surfaces and for gradations of colours.
• Brush with hairs of wolf: Lang Hao. It is used for the more precise layouts such as contours, the bamboos, the trees and the rocks.
• Brush with hairs of goat and wolf: Jian Hao. Constituted of an external crown of flexible goat hairs with an interior end of hard wolf hairs, it combines the quality of the two preceding brushes.

What about Dong Yuan? 

When Dong Yuan was born in 900, China was following the chaotic collapse of the Tang Dynasty that fell as a whole Kingdom at 907 but that was before the prosperous era of the Chinese art of calligraphy. After that China went through the process of dividing the territory into small kingdoms. The most important to us now is the Southern Tang Kingdom because it was there that Dong Yuan developed his own technique and style and became the court's official artist. 

Chinese painting is closely related to Zen Buddhist and Daoist ideals of total concentration in the act of the very moment, and harmony between man and nature. The painter must work with speed, pitch, liveliness, confidence, and technical mastery, infusing spiritual energy into the brushstrokes. Dong Yuan paintings don't attempt to capture the actual physical appearance of a subject, but rather the essential nature or character. Dong Yuan paintings don't have a single perspective; every area of the painting is interesting to the eye.

Dongtian Mountain Hall (洞天山堂)

The inlet by breaking the landscape into groups makes the serenity of the foreground more pronounced, instead of simply being a border to the composition, it is a space of its own, into which the boat intrudes itself, even though it is tiny compared to the mountains and sky above. Dong Yuan uses his unusual brush stroke techniques, later copied in countless paintings, to give a strong sense of foliage to the trees, which contrasts with the rounded waves of stone that make up the mountains themselves. This gives the painting a more distinct middle ground, and makes the mountains have an aura and distance which gives them greater grandeur and personality. He also used "face like" patterns in the mountain on the right.

Riverbank (溪岸圖)

The clouds break the background mountains into a central pyramid composition and a secondary pyramid, by softening the mountain line, he makes the immobile effect more pronounced.

He was known for both figure and landscape paintings, and exemplified the elegant style which would become the standard for brush painting in China for the next nine centuries. He and his pupil Juran (巨然) were the founders of the Southern style of landscape painting, known as the Jiangnan Landscape style. Together with Jing Hao and Guan Tong of the Northern style they constituted the four seminal painters of that time. 

Dongtian Mountain Hall (洞天山堂)

Picture the environment of a distant though yet detailed view that allows the viewer to leave our world to enter the world of the painting and have the opportunity to glimpse the landscape like a bird flying overhead.

Dong Yuan offers us the meditative art focused on nature and the dimension of space that does not fit into a single look.

The most important of this period is that the artist was showing the landscape from a complete perspective. It was not a portrait, it was a magnificent display of the land on a large scale from above, just how your eyes would contemplate if you could fly.

Where to find Dong Yuan's Works:

• Palace Museum - Beijing, China
• Kurokawa Institute - Japan
• National Palace Museum - Taipei, Taiwan
• Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York City
• Shanghai Museum - China