Northern Landscape style - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Northern Landscape style was a manner of chinese landscape painting centered around a loose group of artists who worked and lived in Northern China during the Five Dynasties period that occupied the time between the collapse of the Tang dynasty

Tang

-Chinese name:* Tang Dynasty , Chinese dynasty* Later Tang Dynasty , Turkic dynasty in ancient China* King Tang of Shang , the Shang dynasty ruler, who lived around 1660 BCE...

and the rise of the Song Dynasty

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

.

This style, in retrospect, focuses around the development of a distinct tradition of landscape painting in China. At the beginning of this brief period there was no clear image of how landscape painting would be realised. At its end there existed an idea of a national style.

This style is considered to be founded by Jing Hao

Jing Hao

Jing Hao was a Chinese landscape painter and theorist of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period in Northern China. As an artist, he is often cited along with his pupil, Guan Tong, as one of the most critical figures in the development of the style of monumental landscape painting which...

who was among the first distinctive masters of landscape. His styles were propagated by his pupil Guan Tong

Guan Tong (painter)

Guan Tong , 關仝, , was a Chinese landscape painter of the Northern Landscape style during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period and early Song dynasty, a pupil of Jing Hao, and known as a critical figure in the development of the era's monumental landscape painting...

, who intern influenced Northern Song painters such as Li Cheng

Li Cheng

Li Cheng , style name 咸熙 , was a Chinese painter from Qingzhou during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and early Song Dynasty...

and Fan Kuan

Fan Kuan

Fan Kuan was a Chinese landscape painter of the Song Dynasty considered among the great masters of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Almost no biographical details survive about him. He modeled his early work after that of the artist Li Cheng , but later he concluded that nature was the only...

. Li Cheng uses the dramatic high mountain composition of Jing Hao and Guan Tong. Later his style was enshrined within the artistic orthodoxy of Northern Song Dynasty. Guo Xi

Guo Xi

Guo Xi Chinese landscape painter from Henan Province who lived during the Northern Song dynasty. One text entitled "The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams" is attributed to him. The work covers a variety of themes centered around the appropriate way of painting a landscape...

, patronized by Emperor Shenzong

Emperor Shenzong of Song

Emperor Shenzong of Song was the sixth emperor of the Chinese Song Dynasty. His personal name was Zhao Xu...

, had his name joined to name the Li-Guo school. The tradition the two men created is the classical, imperially sanctioned, official canon of Song Landscape painting.

However it is important to note that Li Cheng was also influenced by the southern Jiangnan Landscape style. Juran

Juran (painter)

Juran was a Chinese landscape painter of the late Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and early Northern Song periods.Very little is known about Juran's life, and not even his family name is known . He was a native of Chiang-Ning and worked at the Southern Tang court in Jinling...

travelled to the Song court around 975. Li Cheng's combination of the northern and southern styles is as if it were a microcosm symbolic of the physical reunification of China under the Song Dynasty. Later Dong Qichang

Dong Qichang

Dong Qichang , courtesy name Xuanzai , was a Chinese painter, scholar, calligrapher, and art theorist of the later period of the Ming Dynasty.-Painter:...

would find it useful to contrast the Jiangnan style and the Northern Landscape style in order to support his theories. However his writings ignore the heavy influence both played on the formation of the artistic tradition in the Song and the subsequent dynasties.

See also