That scholars of China invariably loved bamboos more than anything else may be illustrated by an anecdote of Su Tung-po (蘇東坡), the celebrated man of letters, calligrapher and artist of the Sung Dynasty. Su once said, "I can be contented with a meal without meat, but not a house without bamboos around." (And Su was a famous "meat-eater" whose Tung-po meat remains today one of the dainties in Chinese cuisine.) Because of its high qualities the bamboo has been personified as "the gentleman." That, perhaps, accounts for the old saying: "One cannot live gentlemanly without the indispensable companion, bamboo." In poetry it has often been referred to as "the companion of the gentleman."
Chinese paintings have been classified as follows:
(1) Mountains and streams (landscape)
(2) Persons (portraits)
(3) Birds, animals and flowers
(4) Bamboos and stones
The last-mentioned has been deemed the highest form of Chinese art, because it is closely related to the art of handwriting (calligraphy). Ko Chiu-szu (柯九思) of the Yuan Dynasty formulated his theory of bamboo painting as follows:
"In bamboo-drawing, every skill of calligraphy will have to be demonstrated: you will require the skill of writing 'seal-characters' (篆書) to draw the stems; the skill of writing a 'running hand' (草書) to draw the branches and twigs; and the skill of writing a 'downstroke' or 'square hand' (隸書) to draw the leaves. In a word, to be good at bamboo drawing, one has to 'be a master in calligraphy at the same time."
Pei Chu-I (白居易), the celebrated poet of the Tang D nasty, remarked in one of his verses:
"Bamboos are hard to draw—
Many tried, but few succeeded."
Lo Liang-feng (羅兩岸), a famous artist of the Ching Dynasty, said of the art of bamboo painting:
"You may add a finishing touch or two to the mountains and streams, trees and rocks you draw, to make them look real; and colors to the birds and flowers, to make them look pretty, but you can do none of these things in bamboo painting. You have to succeed or fail, literally, with one stroke of the pen." It has been said that master painters of bamboos are, as a rule, men of excellent character, for none falling short of that can go very far in this branch of art. Ching Tung-hsin (金冬心) of the Ching Dynasty commented on a picture of bamboos as follows:
"Since the time of the Tang and the Sung Dynasties, most painters of bamboos have preferred black and white to colors. Only men of lofty mind and high character could have achieved a certain degree of excellence, but none of the inferior artists have ever succeeded. The bamboo has been treated in Chinese literature as one of the three friends — the other two being the pine-tree and the plum blossom — to symbolize the friendship that survives the hardships of cold winter. Pictures of bamboos have been highly appreciated, because in them it is the personality of the artist that speaks."
For more than one thousand years since, the Tang Dynasty, we have not had more than twenty successful painters of bamboos. Of them the following are the most prominent:
Tang Dynasty (618-906)
Hsiao Yueh (蕭悅)
Sung Dynasty (960-1278)
Wen Yu-ko (文與可)
Su Tung-po (蘇東坡)
Yuan Dynasty (1277-1341)
Wu Chung-Kuei (吳仲圭)
Li Hsi-chai (李息齊)
Kao Ke-kung (高克恭)
Ko Chiu-szu (柯九思)
Kuan Tao-sheng (管道昇)
Chao Meng-fu (趙孟頫)
Ni Yun-lin (倪雲林)
Ku Ting-tzu (顧定之)
Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)
Wang Meng-tuan (王孟端)
Hsia Chung-chao (夏仲昭)
These are rare geniuses indeed. Clearly, this also proves how rarely have artists attained to a high degree of success in the pure art of bamboo painting.