The Landscapes
Hung Sheng, "Huang Gongwang, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains," in Smarthistory, November 28, 2015, accessed February 14, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/huang-gongwang-dwelling-in-the-fuchun-mountains/.
Dr. Sonia Coman and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Bamboo in the Four Seasons: painting and poetry in Japan," in Smarthistory, March 16, 2018, accessed February 14, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/tosa-mistunobu/.
In the "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" scroll we can see the panorama of scenes that took the artist, Huang Gongwang years to finish. The scroll wasn't created in a short period and it wasn't painted at any time, it was when the artist felt it was the time to paint in which he added another section to the scroll. The scroll would have also been burned if it had not been saved by the nephew of Wu Hongyu, a collector. It was Wu Hongyu's dying wish for the scroll to be burnt so he could take it to the afterlife with him, since he was so fond of the scroll and wanted to enjoy it for the rest of eternity. His nephew managed to save it but it was split into two parts, one of about 51.4 centimeters which is in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou and the other part of nearly 21 feet resides in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The painting was made when Huang was in his 70s, around 1347, and he was traveling through the Fuchun mountain region with his Daoist friend Zheng Wuyong. Huang also made sure to pay tribute to his early masters by using some of the textural strokes that they had developed. Huang's scroll is considered a national treasure due to the influence it had on future literati painters.
In the "Bamboo in the Four Seasons" scroll that is nearly 5 feet long we are shown a painting that has primarily Japanese characteristics. The bamboo is an inherently Chinese feature but the idea of the passage of time through the seasons in a Japanese style. It also starts from right to left, with violets and shepherd's purse which is done for renga poems, which is an important traditional Japanese poem. There is also examples of waka poems, which were classically Japanese love poems, and they talked about the passage of time and used certain times of the year and plants/items to show the type of love that they are referencing. Most painters during the 16th century didn't sign their paintings, especially Imperial painters, which made it difficult to figure out who painted what but, we were able to figure out that the painting was a Tosa painting due to the attribution that was associated with the Tosa school of painting. We were also able to figure out that this painting was most likely located in a room, that eventually was probably destroyed, due to the indents that show where door handles would have been located.
The two paintings show depictions of nature throughout different times, the "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" is a panorama, while the "Bamboo in the Four Seasons" shows the same scene in different seasons, as the name suggests. The Fuchun Mountains painting is a Chinese painting that contains techniques that were created by the artist's early masters. The Bamboo painting is a Japanese painting that contains a few Chinese characteristics, like the bamboo, but uses Japanese storytelling and poem styles to tell the story within the brushstrokes. The location for where the paintings were to be also set them apart as the Fuchun Mountains painting was done as a scroll that was mainly just for the artist's pleasure and the Bamboo painting is believed to have belonged in a room mounted on the doors and was commissioned during the Imperial era.
This is a very interesting post. I had briefly read about the Bamboo in Four Seasons scroll before but nothing on the information I read from your post. It is interesting to me that the painting made by Huang was made around 1374. Also that the man wanted to have the work burned when he passed away. I would have thought that something like this he would want protected, preserved, shared, or even kept for learning purposes. With the piece being so long, I wonder how long it truly took for the artist to create.
ReplyDeleteI thought you did a wonderful job of relaying the information provided by the sources. This is a good start, but you need to take it a little further by providing a thesis statement. Try looking at the two paintings and asking yourself what they have in common or what is different. Once you have that, then you can use the sources to back up the statement. I struggle with this as well, but what I have been doing is pretending that I am explaining the work to someone that has no background information. My dog will be very well versed in art history by the end of the semester.
ReplyDeleteI liked this post and the way you have formatted the information in your paragraphs. It makes understanding the information a lot easier. However, I feel as if adding an introduction of sorts would make the whole post flow a lot smoother.
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