Chinese Painting and Traditional Chinese Art

In art, Chinese painting means the brush-and-ink tradition of China, painted on silk or paper, from the Song dynasty (960–1279), when landscape painters created new manners, to the Qing (1644–1911). Its great subjects were figures, landscape, and birds and flowers, the National Palace Museum in Taipei says. From the Northern Song on, scholars held that a painting had to go beyond the appearance of things to express the ideas and cultivation of the painter, and that idea became literati, or scholar, painting.

Sources: National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection

Traditional Chinese painting is made with brush and ink, often with light color, on silk or paper, and mounted as a hanging scroll, a handscroll, an album leaf or a fan. It prizes lively brushwork over illusion, and from the Southern Song on it often joined painting, poetry and calligraphy in one work, the “Three Perfections,” as the National Palace Museum in Taipei calls them. Painters also worked after old masters: the Cleveland Museum of Art describes this practice of fang, imitation, as a path to creative transformation.

Sources: National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection · Getty AAT: handscrolls · Getty AAT: hanging scrolls · Cleveland Museum of Art: Chen Hongshou, The Mountain of Five Cataracts

Chinese painting is divided by subject into landscape (shan shui), figure painting and bird-and-flower painting, and by manner into the meticulous gongbi style and freer painting in ink. Getty's art vocabulary defines gongbi as meticulous brushwork with attention to details, forms and standards, usually in color. The National Palace Museum in Taipei also traces schools: the Wu School of Suzhou and the Zhe School under the Ming, the Orthodox School of the early Qing, and the individualist painters of Yangzhou and Shanghai.

Sources: Getty AAT: shan shui · Getty AAT: gongbi · Getty AAT: bird-and-flower paintings · National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection

Chinese ink painting is painting in black ink with a brush, from dense black strokes to pale washes, sometimes with a little color. Under the Ming, the Zhe School created a “direct and liberated manner of monochrome ink painting” based on Southern Song models, the National Palace Museum in Taipei says. The Cleveland Museum of Art praises Du Jin's lively brushwork in varying dots, strokes and sweeps in different shades of ink, and notes that Bada Shanren was known for compositions in contrasting ink tones.

Sources: National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection · Cleveland Museum of Art: Du Jin, The Poet Lin Bu Wandering in the Moonlight · Cleveland Museum of Art: Bada Shanren, Landscape after Guo Zhongshu

Shan shui is Chinese landscape painting: pictures of mountains and water. Getty's art vocabulary says the Northern Song (960–1127) produced monumental shan shui and the Southern Song (1127–1279) more intimate, misty views of lakes and rivers, and that a landscape could stand for the whole universe. The National Palace Museum in Taipei calls three Northern Song hanging scrolls, Fan Kuan's Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, Guo Xi's Early Spring of 1072 and Li Tang's Whispering Pines in Myriad Valleys of 1124, the “Three Treasures” of its collection.

Sources: Getty AAT: shan shui · National Palace Museum, Taipei: A Trio of National Treasures

Gongbi is the meticulous, fine-line manner of Chinese painting, usually in color. Getty's art vocabulary defines it as a technique of meticulous brushwork with attention to details, forms and standards. The Art Institute of Chicago describes the Song dynasty convention of applying rich color within outlines for decorative, lifelike bird-and-flower paintings, a manner Ren Yi followed before he turned to looser brushwork and ink washes.

Sources: Getty AAT: gongbi · Art Institute of Chicago: Ren Yi, Birds on Red Plum

The most famous Chinese painters include Gu Kaizhi and Wu Daozi, who laid the foundations of figure painting; Fan Kuan, Guo Xi and Li Tang of the Song dynasty; Zhao Mengfu and the Four Yuan Masters, Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zan and Wang Meng; and Dong Qichang and the Four Wangs of the early Qing, all named by the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Add Shen Zhou, regarded as the founder of the Wu School, Wen Zhengming, and Bada Shanren, who, the Cleveland Museum of Art says, rejected convention in favor of personal expression.

Sources: National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection · National Palace Museum, Taipei: A Trio of National Treasures · Cleveland Museum of Art: Shen Zhou, Twelve Views of Tiger Hill · Cleveland Museum of Art: Bada Shanren, Landscape after Guo Zhongshu

Measured by the number of languages with an encyclopedia article about it, the most famous Chinese painting is Along the River During the Qingming Festival, a handscroll on silk by the Song painter Zhang Zeduan in the Palace Museum in Beijing, with articles in 27 languages in November 2026. It is more than five meters long, and the museum counts over 500 people in it. Next come Han Gan's Night-Shining White, a Tang dynasty horse of about 750 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, with 15 each.

Sources: Palace Museum, Beijing: Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Chinese) · Metropolitan Museum of Art: Han Gan, Night-Shining White

Song dynasty painting (960–1279) set the models later Chinese painters followed. In the north, Fan Kuan, Guo Xi and Li Tang created monumental mountain landscapes, the National Palace Museum in Taipei says, and Zhang Zeduan's Along the River During the Qingming Festival records the bustling capital, Kaifeng. After the capital moved to Hangzhou, court painters such as Ma Yuan turned to more intimate scenery, and painting, poetry and calligraphy came together on album leaves and fans, a fashion the museum traces to Emperor Huizong's court.

Sources: National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection · National Palace Museum, Taipei: A Trio of National Treasures · Palace Museum, Beijing: Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Chinese) · National Palace Museum, Taipei: Ma Yuan, Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring (Chinese) · Cleveland Museum of Art: Li Anzhong, Cottages in a Misty Grove in Autumn

The great Ming dynasty (1368–1644) painters include Shen Zhou, regarded as the founder of the Wu School in Suzhou, and Wen Zhengming, its leading figure; Qiu Ying, whom the National Palace Museum in Taipei counts with Wen among the four masters of the Ming; the Zhe School painters of Zhejiang, such as the court painter Lü Wenying; and, late in the dynasty, Dong Qichang and Chen Hongshou.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Shen Zhou, Twelve Views of Tiger Hill · National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, selections · National Palace Museum, Taipei: Pictorial Songs of the Brush, a guide to paintings in the collection · Cleveland Museum of Art: Lü Wenying, River Village in a Rainstorm · Cleveland Museum of Art: Chen Hongshou, The Mountain of Five Cataracts

A handscroll is a long horizontal painting that you open a section at a time, from right to left. Getty's art vocabulary defines handscrolls as narrow lateral paintings, often many feet long, viewed section by section, while a hanging scroll is displayed vertically. The Art Institute of Chicago's Peach Blossom Spring, a silk handscroll more than 5.5 meters long, tells its story from right to left.

Sources: Getty AAT: handscrolls · Getty AAT: hanging scrolls · Art Institute of Chicago: The Peach Blossom Spring

Yes, for the classical paintings on this page: every painter featured here died by 1896, so their paintings are in the public domain in the United States and in countries where copyright ends 70 years after the artist's death. You can download them free and use them for anything, including commercial projects. Our collection also holds a few works by 20th-century Chinese painters who died after 1955, so check the artist's dates before reusing a modern work.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain

Along the River During the Qingming Festival, The Night Revels of Han Xizai and A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains are in the Palace Museum in Beijing. The National Palace Museum in Taipei holds Fan Kuan's Travelers Among Mountains and Streams and Guo Xi's Early Spring, and shows them for no more than 42 days at a time to protect their fragile silk. Outside China, the British Museum holds the Admonitions Scroll, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, holds The Thirteen Emperors and Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds Han Gan's Night-Shining White.

Sources: Palace Museum, Beijing: Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Chinese) · Palace Museum, Beijing: Gu Hongzhong, The Night Revels of Han Xizai (Chinese) · Palace Museum, Beijing: Wang Ximeng, A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains (Chinese) · National Palace Museum, Taipei: A Trio of National Treasures · British Museum: The Admonitions Scroll, 1903,0408,0.1 (Google Arts & Culture) · Google Arts & Culture: The Thirteen Emperors (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) · Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Court Ladies or Pin-Up Girls? (2014) · Metropolitan Museum of Art: Han Gan, Night-Shining White