History of the Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan dynasty was established by Mongol nomads that ruled portions and eventually all of China from the early 13th century to 1368. Mongol suzerainty eventually also stretched throughout most of Asia and eastern Europe, though the Yuan emperors were rarely able to exercise much control over their more distant possessions.
Although the Mongol conquest made China part of an empire that stretched from Korea to Hungary and opened its doors to foreign contacts as never before, this short-lived dynasty was oppressive and corrupt. Its later decades were marked by social and administrative chaos in which the arts received little official encouragement. The Mongols distrusted the Chinese intelligentsia, relying primarily on Central Asians for government administrative functions. Nevertheless, some influential Chinese writers recognized that the Mongols brought a sense of martial discipline that was lacking in the previous Song Dynasty and after 1286 an increasing number of Chinese scholars were persuaded to enter government service, undoubtedly hoping to influence their rulers to adopt a more benign policy toward the Chinese people.
Literati Painting During this Period
It was in this period that the amateur art of painters of the scholar class (in the tradition of Su Dongpo and his late Northern Song colleagues) first came to dominate Chinese painting standards.
The restriction of the scholars’ opportunities at court and the choice of many of them to withdraw into seclusion rather than serve the Mongols created a heightened sense of class identity and individual purpose, which in turn inspired their art. Eremitic rather than courtly values now shaped the art of painting as never before, and a stylistic gulf sprang up between literati painters and court professionals that was not bridged until the 18th century.
Whereas most painting had previously displayed technical refinement and had conservatively transmitted the heritage of the immediate past, gradually evolving through modest individual departures, the literati thenceforth typically based their styles on a wide-ranging knowledge of distant stylistic precedents, selectively chosen and radically transformed by means of expressive calligraphic brushwork. Style and subject were both intended to reflect closely the artist’s own personality and mood rather than conforming to the wishes of a patron. Typical were the simply brushed orchid paintings of Zheng Sixiao (郑思肖), who painted this traditional symbol of political loyalty without any ground beneath as a comment on the grievous loss of China to foreign domination.
Qian Xuan (钱选) was among the first to define this new direction. From Wuxing in Zhejiang province, he declined an invitation to serve at court, as reflected in his painting style and themes. A conservative painter before the Mongol conquest, especially of realistic flowers and birds, he altered his style to incorporate the primitive qualities of ancient painting, favouring the Tang blue-and-green manner in his landscape painting, stiff or peculiarly mannered renditions of vegetation and small animals, and the archaic flavour of clerical script in his brushwork. Calligraphy became a part of his design and frequently confirmed through historical references a link between subject matter and his eremitic choice of lifestyle. Like many Chinese scholars who espoused this amateur ideal, Qian Xuan was obliged by demeaning circumstances to exchange his paintings in return for his family’s livelihood.
The most distinguished of the literati painters was Zhao Mengfu (赵孟頫), a fellow townsman and younger follower of Qian Xuan who became a high official and president of the imperial Hanlin Academy. In his official travels he collected paintings by Northern Song masters that inspired him to revive and reinterpret the classical styles in his own fashion. A notable example is Autumn Colours on the Que and Hua Mountains, a nostalgic, deliberately archaistic landscape in the Tang manner. The hand scrolls Two Pines Level Distance and Water Village exemplify his reinterpretation of past masters (Li Cheng and Dong Yuan, respectively) and furthered the new direction of literati landscape painting by applying the standards and techniques of calligraphy to painting.
Other literati painters who worked at the Yuan court perpetuated more conservative Song styles, often rivaling or even surpassing their Song predecessors in the process. Ren Renfa (任仁发) worked in great detail and was perhaps the last of ancient China’s great horse painters; he defended his court service through both the style and theme of his paintings. Li Kan (李衎) carefully studied the varieties of bamboo during his official travels and wrote a systematic treatise on painting them; he remains unsurpassed as a skilled bamboo painter. Gao Kegong (高克恭) followed Mi Fu and Mi Youren in painting cloudy landscapes that symbolized good government. Wang Mian (王冕), who served not the Mongols but anti-Mongol forces at the end of the dynasty, set the highest standard for the painting of plums, a symbol of irrepressible purity and, potentially, of revolutionary zeal.
In retrospect, however, it was the ideals of the retired scholars that had the most lasting effect on later Chinese art. This may be summed up as individuality of expression, brushwork more revealing of the inner spirit of the subject—or of the artist himself—than of outward appearance, and suppression of the realistic and decorative in favour of an intentional plainness, understatement and awkwardness, which marks the integrity of the gentleman suspicious of too much skill.
Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty
Four masters of the middle and later Yuan, all greatly influenced by Zhao Mengfu, came to be regarded as the foremost exponents of this philosophy of painting in the Yuan period.
Huang Gongwang (黄公望), a Daoist recluse, was the oldest. His most revered and perhaps only authentic surviving work is the hand scroll Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, painted with dynamic brushwork during occasional moods of inspiration between 1347 and 1350. Unlike the academicians, Gongwang did not hesitate to go over his brushwork, for expression, not representation, was his aim. The cumulative effect of his masterpiece is obtained not by its fidelity to visible forms but by a profound feeling of oneness with nature that set an ideal standard for later scholarly painting.
This scholarly serenity was also expressed in the landscapes of Wu Zhen (吴镇), a poor Daoist diviner, poet, and master painter who, like Huang Gongwang, was inspired by Dong Yuan and Juran, whose manner he rendered, in landscapes and bamboo painting alike, with blunt brushwork, minimal motion, and utmost calm. His bamboo paintings are also superb, and, in an album in the National Palace Museum (Taipei), he pays tribute to his Song dynasty predecessors Su Dongpo and Wen Tong.
The third of the Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty was Ni Zan (倪瓒), a prosperous gentleman and bibliophile forced by crippling taxation to give up his estates and become a wanderer. As a landscapist, he eliminated all depictions of human beings. He thus reduced the compositional pattern of Li Cheng (symbolizing lofty gentlemen in isolation from the court) to its simplest terms, achieving, as Wu Zhen had, a sense of austere and monumental calm with the slenderest of means. He used ink, it was said, as sparingly as if it were gold.
Quite different was the technique of the fourth Yuan master, Wang Meng (王蒙), a grandson of Zhao Mengfu. His brushwork was dense and energetic, derived from Dong Yuan but tangled and hoary and thereby imbued with a feeling of great antiquity. He often drew heavily from Guo Xi or from what he perceived as Tang traditions in his landscape compositions, which he filled with scholarly retreats. He sometimes used strong colours as well, which added a degree of visual charm and nostalgia to his painting that was lacking in the other three masters’ work.
The combination in the Four Masters of a consistent philosophical and political attitude and a wide range of ink techniques made them models for later literati painters, both in their lives and in their art. It is impossible to appreciate the work of the landscape painters of the Ming and Qing dynasties unless one is aware of how acutely conscious they were of their debt to the Yuan masters and how frequently they paid tribute to them both in their style and in their inscriptions. From this point on, indeed, the artist’s own inscription, as well as the colophons of admirers and connoisseurs, became an integral part of the total work of art.