Written by a team of eminent international scholars, this book is the first to recount the history of Chinese painting over a span of some 3000 years.

200字段据版权页著录

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Landscape has been the dominant subject in Chinese painting ever since it emerged as the pre-eminent art form of the Northern Sung period (960-1127). The recent acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum, as a gift of the Dillon Fund, of a superb large Northern Sung handscroll, Summer Mountains, provides the opportunity to consider in some detail the landscape art of this period, together with its antecedents and later permutations. Developing during the war-filled years of the tenth century, Northern Sung landscape painting produced timeless images that were followed and imitated for centuries. This art reached its apogee in the third quarter of the eleventh century. After the fall of the Northern Sung, it continued to be popular in the north, both under the Chin tartar and then the Mongol rule during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Meantime the painters of the Southern Sung (1127-1276), south of the Yangtze River, developed a simplified style that described the softer landscapes of the south.

Over thousands of years, the art of Chinese painting has evolved, while also staying loyal to its traditional roots. Despite various schools of thought, styles and techniques, three primary categories have emerged across the discipline: landscape, figure and bird-and-flower. Using fine ink and water brush strokes on paper or silk, Chinese artists have developed a unique style—one that's famous throughout the world.This book highlights 50 Chinese paintings, pulled from museum collections in China and around the world, including British Museum (London), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas), Osaka City Museum of Art (Osaka), Palace Museum (Beijing), Palace Museum (Taibei) and Shanghai Museum. The paintings shown are representative of the categories, historical periods and styles of this artistic tradition.Detailed professional interpretations and notes allow readers to learn more about the pieces themselves, the artists and the context in which they were created. Plus, photo enlargements of key details get readers up close to these masterpieces.As one of the world's oldest continuous art forms, Chinese painting has a truly special history. This comprehensive guide allows modern readers to travel through time, experiencing important moments in Chinese history and society through beautiful pieces of artwork.