The earliest known ink paintings date back to the third century B.C. Human figures, as diverse as courtesans and Buddhas, formed the major subject matter of paintings from the Han to the Tang dynasties, but in the ninth century A.D. artists began to concentrate on landscape, and this has remained the focus ever since.
Toward the end of the eighth century A.D. painters started to show a preference for ink monochrome over gaudy colors, and sparse, precise brushwork came into vogue. At the same time, ink painters sought to add interest to their work through the use of techniques such as po mo (潑墨), literally, "splashing ink," which involved adding thick ink to those aspects the artist wanted to emphasize, and tsun-fa (皴法), or "cracking" the ink. The latter technique, which has many variants, involves holding the brush horizontally and rubbing the contours of the landscape until the finish suggests a mountain's rocky, irregular surface.
Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries a succession of Sung dynasty masters including Fan Kuan (范寬), Kuo Hsi (郭熙), and Li Tang (李堂) ushered Chinese painting into its golden age. The works of Fan Kuan and Li Tang are characterized by imposing landscapes, harmonious atmosphere, and orderly composition, whereas Kuo Hsi introduced a sense of space by the deployment of unbalanced composition. Professional painters abounded, but by the middle of the sixteenth century they had largely been overtaken in status by the scholarly amateurs of the Wu school, based in Suzhou.
The rise of landscape painting was stimulated by Taoism which, in its pursuit of unity between human beings and nature, indirectly led painters to seek out the beauties of the landscape around them. To some extent, artists considered landscape as an expression of a philosophical attitude or a reflection of one's mood, rather than an exact pictorial representation. This concept, however, was carried to or even beyond its logical conclusion by the Sung dynasty's wen-jen hua (文人畫), or Literati Movement. This group of intellectuals put forward the view that painting, like poetry, was a way of cleansing the mind or manifesting personality. The artist's work was supposed to come entirely from within, thus downplaying any relationship with the external world. The wen-jen hua movement has had a deep and lasting influence on Chinese painting. Right up to the twentieth century, great ink painters like Li Ke-ran (李可染) were still worrying over the repercussions of the wen-jen hua movement and arguing for a greater appreciation of nature's objective beauty.
There are, of course, innumerable differences between Chinese and Western art, but two are particularly worthy of mention here. Unlike their Western counterparts, who strive to represent the interplay between light and shadow or soften the contour of substance in order to raise voluminosity, traditional Chinese ink painters maintain that, in the words of seventeenth-century artist Shih Tao (石濤), "The line is the beginning of everything." Thus, a major criterion for judging a painting is the vitality and the rhythm of its lines.
Furthermore, painting was not primarily intended for exhibition—at least, not to the general public. Connoisseurs preserved their ink paintings—usually in the form of hand scrolls or hanging scrolls, folding screens or fans—in finely decorated wooden boxes, and would bring them out for contemplation only at certain times: perhaps because the season was considered appropriate for displaying a particular work, or simply because the owner felt in the proper frame of mind.
Differences notwithstanding, Western observes have been captivated by the beauty and grace of Chinese ink paintings for hundreds of years, and there can be no doubt but that this art form will continue to enchant countless generations to come.