CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Song Dynasty
Chinese art of 960–1279: monumental and misty landscape painting, the Huizong court, scholar painting and refined celadon and tea wares.
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About
The Song dynasty (960–1279) is often counted the high point of Chinese painting and ceramics. In the north, 11th-century painters built monumental landscapes in hanging scrolls: Fan Kuan's Travellers among Mountains and Streams (early 11th century) sets tiny figures beneath a towering cliff, and Guo Xi's Early Spring (1072) shows mountains that seem to breathe in drifting mist. Zhang Zeduan's handscroll Along the River During the Qingming Festival (early 12th century) follows crowds, boats and shops into a city. The emperor Huizong, himself a painter and calligrapher, steered court artists towards close observation of birds and flowers.
After the court fled south in 1127 and settled at Hangzhou, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui pared landscape down to a corner of rock and a wash of empty space. Potters matched this restraint with glaze rather than decoration: blue-green Ru and Longquan celadons, ivory-white Ding wares, and dark Jian tea bowls streaked like hare's fur.