Huà shānshuǐ fù 畫山水賦
Rhapsody on Landscape Painting (with the Bǐfǎ jì 筆法記 appended) attributed to 荊浩 (Jīng Hào, late Táng/Five Dynasties, zhuàn 撰 — attribution disputed by the Sìkù editors)
About the work
A short rhymed treatise on the painting of mountain-and-water landscape, accompanied (in the Sìkù volume) by the Bǐfǎ jì 筆法記, a question-and-answer dialogue on the principles of landscape brushwork. Both texts circulate under the name of Jīng Hào 荊浩 — the great late-Táng / Five Dynasties recluse-landscapist of the Hónggǔ 洪谷 mountains, famous as the master from whom Fàn Kuān 范寬 and the entire Northern Sòng monumental landscape tradition is descended. The Sìkù editors were however sceptical of both attributions: see the tíyào below. As “Jīng Hào texts” they nevertheless transmit the earliest articulated theory of monumental landscape painting and remain the foundation document of the Northern Sòng tradition’s self-understanding.
Tiyao
We have respectfully examined: Huà shānshuǐ fù in one juàn with Bǐfǎ jì in one juàn appended (Zhèjiāng-province Bào Shìgōng family copy). The old text titles it as composed by Jīng Hào of the Táng. Now: Liú Dàochún’s Wǔdài mínghuà bǔyí KR3h0014 says: “Jīng Hào, zì Hàorán, a man of Qìnshuǐ in Hénán; the times of the Five Reigns being many in calamity, he hid in Tàiháng’s Hónggǔ valley, calling himself Hónggǔzǐ; he composed a Shānshuǐ jué in one juàn.” Tāng Hòu’s Huàjiàn KR3h0037 likewise says: “Jīng Hào’s landscapes are the highest of the late Táng; he composed the Shānshuǐ jué, ancestor to Fàn Kuān and his school.” Hence this book was originally titled Shānshuǐ jué. The present edition (in Zhān Jǐngfèng’s Wángshì huàyuàn bǔyì) alone titles it Huà shānshuǐ fù. But examine: from Xún Qīng onwards the form of the fù changed several times; from the Hàn through the Táng there was no unrhymed form. The present piece uses parallel couplets but its rhyming is irregular — several lines have rhyme, several do not, more in the manner of sǎntǐ prose; to title it a fù is unwarranted. It further makes Hào a man of Yùzhāng, titling it “Mr. of Yùzhāng” — a baseless fabrication. Separately the Bǐfǎ jì in one juàn (in Wáng’s Huàyuàn) carries the note “another name: Huà shānshuǐ lù.” Now the Tángshū·Yìwénzhì records “Jīng Hào Bǐfǎ jì, one juàn”; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí records “Shānshuǐ shòu bǐfǎ, one juàn, by Hàorán of Qìnshuǐ.” Examining the inside of the jì, it refers to “meeting an old man before the Stone-Drum Cliff who imparted the brush-method”: Chén’s title is therefore the original name; the Tángshū gives an abbreviated form; the Huàyuàn’s note is a later renaming. The prose of both books is awkward and stiff; the diction shifts abruptly from refined to vulgar — they look like the work of an artisan who knew something of characters but nothing of letters, attaching to the Jīng Hào name. They are not his original books. Yet, since they have long circulated and contain some defensible critical points, we have nevertheless recorded them as preserving one painter-tradition’s view. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), fourth month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì.
Abstract
The texts circulating under Jīng Hào’s name — the Bǐfǎ jì and the (probably renamed) Huà shānshuǐ fù — articulate the late-Táng / Five Dynasties theory of monumental landscape: the Liùyào 六要 (six essentials: qì 氣 vitality, yùn 韻 resonance, sī 思 thought, jǐng 景 scene, bǐ 筆 brush, mò 墨 ink); the sìshì 四勢 (four configurations); the famous Sōngshù tú and Shànzǐ shū dialogue; and the Cliff-Drum encounter with the old man who teaches the painter to “transmit truth” (chuánzhēn 傳真) rather than to “image likeness” (túsì 圖似). The Sìkù editors regarded both works as Song-period or later pseudepigrapha attaching to Jīng Hào’s name — a judgement still debated. Recent scholarship (Bush, Munakata, Hironobu Kohara) treats them as late Northern Sòng texts that nevertheless preserve much earlier landscape-painting lore; the dating bracket given here (c. 900 – c. 1100) reflects the received recension, not the lifedates of Jīng Hào himself, who flourished in the early tenth century. The book is the principal theoretical source for understanding the Northern Sòng monumental landscape tradition’s self-image.
Translations and research
- Munakata, Kiyohiko. Ching Hao’s Pi-fa-chi: A Note on the Art of Brush. Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1974 (full annotated translation; the standard Western-language version).
- Bush, Susan, and Hsio-yen Shih, eds. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
- Bush, Susan. “Tsung Ping’s Essay on Painting Landscape and the ‘Landscape Buddhism’ of Mount Lu.” In Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 132–164.
- Kohara, Hironobu 古原宏伸. Sansuiga ron 山水画論. Kyoto: Bukkyō Geijutsu Gakkai, 1972.
Other points of interest
The Bǐfǎ jì’s Liùyào (six essentials) consciously revises Xiè Hè’s KR3h0001 Liùfǎ 六法, replacing the HànWèi figural categories with categories adapted to landscape — a doctrinal move that articulates the rising autonomy of the landscape genre at the turn from Táng to Sòng.