中国画
Zhōngguó huàChinese painting (also called 国画 guóhuà, national painting) differs from Western oil painting in philosophical orientation as much as technique: its goal is the capture of essence, spirit, and the painter's own cultivation through brush and ink, not photographic accuracy.
The defining materials of Chinese painting are 笔 bǐ (brush), 墨 mò (ink), 纸 zhǐ (paper, especially xuan paper 宣纸) and 绢 juàn (silk), known collectively as 文房四宝 wénfáng sì bǎo (the four treasures of the scholar's studio, which also include 砚 yàn the inkstone). These tools produce a particular quality of line, varying in thickness, wetness, pressure, and speed in ways that directly register the physical and mental state of the painter at the moment of execution.
The classical critical standard for Chinese painting is 气韵生动 qì yùn shēng dòng ("spirit resonance and vitality"), articulated by the fifth-century critic Xie He (谢赫) as the first and most important of his Six Laws of Painting (绘画六法). A painting succeeds when it has 气韵, the animated spirit that makes the painted bamboo seem to breathe and the mountain seem to live. Photographic accuracy is a lesser achievement; 气韵 is transcendent.
Chinese painting and calligraphy share the same tools, the same physical disciplines, and the same aesthetics. The phrase 书画同源 shūhuà tóngyuán (calligraphy and painting share the same source) expresses this unity. A master calligrapher is often also a painter; the stroke-quality developed in calligraphy training directly informs painting technique. Many of the most celebrated Chinese painters were also poets and calligraphers, and the three arts (诗书画 shī shū huà) form an integrated cultural practice in the literati tradition.
花鸟画 huāniǎohuà: flower-and-bird painting. Flowers, birds, insects, fish are subjects from the natural world carrying dense symbolic meaning. The crane (鹤) represents longevity and immortality. The plum blossom (梅) represents perseverance through adversity. The bamboo (竹) represents integrity. The orchid (兰) represents virtue in obscurity. Reading flower-and-bird painting requires knowing the symbolic vocabulary.
人物画 rénwùhuà: figure painting. Court figures, Buddhist and Daoist subjects, historical narratives. The Tang dynasty is the golden age of figure painting (阎立本 Yan Liben, 吴道子 Wu Daozi). Figure painting declined relative to landscape after the Song as the literati aesthetic shifted toward nature subjects.
文人画 (scholar-official painting; literati painting) is the dominant aesthetic tradition in Chinese painting from the Song dynasty onward. It holds that painting should be the expression of a cultivated individual's inner world, his learning, moral cultivation, poetic sensibility, and emotional life, rather than a technical craft practiced for commissions or decorative purposes.
The literati painter ideally combines 诗书画印 shī shū huà yìn (poetry, calligraphy, painting, and seal carving) in a single work. A finished 文人画 scroll typically includes the painting, the painter's own poem or colophon, the painting title written in calligraphy, and the painter's seal impression in red. The composition is unified around the painter's singular voice.
The four exemplary subjects of literati painting are 梅兰竹菊 méi lán zhú jú (plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum), called 四君子 sì jūnzǐ (the Four Gentlemen). They were chosen for their symbolic resonance with literati values: perseverance under hardship (梅), virtue in obscurity (兰), integrity and flexibility (竹), vitality in late seasons (菊). Painting these subjects was a form of moral self-expression.