Línquán gāozhì jí 林泉高致集
Lofty Aspirations among Forests and Streams by 郭熙 (Guō Xī, zì Chúnfū 淳夫, Hànlín dàizhào zhícháng, 宋, zhuàn 撰); edited and annotated by his son 郭思 (Guō Sī, zì Dézhī 得之, jìnshì 1082, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
The single most important Northern Sòng treatise on landscape painting and the founding theoretical text of the LǐGuō 李郭 (Lǐ Chéng – Guō Xī) tradition that dominated Northern Sòng landscape practice. The book is in six chapters: (1) Shānshuǐ xùn 山水訓 — instructions on landscape; (2) Huàyì 畫意 — the intention of painting; (3) Huàjué 畫訣 — formulae of painting; (4) Huàtí 畫題 — painting titles; (5) Huàgé shíyí 畫格拾遺 — gleanings on painters’ styles, recording Guō Xī’s authenticated surviving works; (6) Huàjì 畫記 — biographical record of Guō Xī’s career and his favoured reception by Shénzōng. The first four chapters are by Guō Xī himself, with annotations by his son Guō Sī; chapters 5 and 6 are by Guō Sī alone. The preface is by Xǔ Guāngníng 許光凝 (Hànlín xuéshì of Hénán) and is dated Zhènghé 7 (1117). The treatise’s Shānshuǐ xùn contains the famous Sānyuǎn 三遠 (Three Distances: gāoyuǎn 高遠 high, shēnyuǎn 深遠 deep, píngyuǎn 平遠 level distance) — one of the most consequential compositional formulations in East Asian painting theory.
Tiyao
We have respectfully examined: Línquán gāozhì jí in one juàn. Old text titles it as composed by Guō Sī of the Sòng. Sī’s father Xī, zì Chúnfū, a man of Wēnxiàn 溫縣, was Hànlín dàizhào zhícháng and famous in his time for painting. Sī, zì Dézhī, became jìnshì in Yuánfēng 5 (1082) and rose to Huīyóugé dàizhì and QínFènglù jīnglüè ānfǔshǐ. The book opens with Sī’s own preface, saying: “While a boy I attended my father, recording in writing whatever I heard from him, gathering up and editing the material for fellow enthusiasts” — so Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí takes the book as Sī’s posthumous compilation of his father’s remains. Now the book has six pieces: Shānshuǐ xùn, Huàyì, Huàjué, Huàtí, Huàgé shíyí, Huàjì. The head of these pieces is in fact titled “composed by the bestowed Zhèngyì dàifū Guō Xī.” There is also a Zhènghé 7 (1117) preface by Xǔ Guāngníng, Hànlín xuéshì of Hénán, saying: “The duke’s discourses on the principles of brush, fairly to be summed up, fill the volume — titled Línquán gāozhì by the Guōs.” The text contains many added explanatory notes by Sī, with the explicit statement that “[Sī] from time to time, on the strength of what he had heard, has annotated [the master’s text].” So from Shānshuǐ xùn to Huàtí, the four chapters are all Xī’s words with Sī’s annotations; only Huàgé shíyí, recording Xī’s authentic surviving paintings, and Huàjì, recording the favourable treatment Xī received under Shénzōng, are Sī’s own composition. They have been combined into one. The Xǔ Guāngníng preface also mentions “from Yuánfēng on, poems, hymns, encomia, records [in Guō Xī’s praise]”; Chén Zhènsūn already noted these as missing — and the present text has prefixed Wáng Wéi’s Shānshuǐ jué, Lǐ Chéng’s Shānshuǐ jué, Jīng Hào’s Shānshuǐ fù, Dǒng Yǔ’s Huàlóng jíyì — none of which are part of the original Guō text. At the end of the book is the line “recut by Ōuyáng Bìxué of Yùzhāng, Zhìzhèng 8 (1348)” — perhaps the Yuán reprinter’s addition. Separate editions also have a Shānshuǐ jué zuǎn in one juàn, also titled as by Guō Sī, with a preface by Wáng Wěi (Qiānshū Hénánfǔ pànguāntīng gōngshì) saying that Sī described his father’s daily oral teachings on landscape methods, that enthusiasts loved to circulate the text, that Wěi had it first, and that he had it blocked and circulated in Dàguān 4 (1110); the text agrees with the Shānshuǐ xùn here. We suspect Sī first compiled this short version, then expanded it into the Línquán gāozhì jí — but since the shorter version was already in circulation, both remained current to the present day. At the end of the book is also a Túhuà jiànwén zhì in one juàn, sharing the name of Guō Ruòxū’s KR3h0017 book but with completely different text; it includes Yè Mèngdé’s evaluations of painters and is plainly not Sī’s compilation — apparently originally a separate book, a continuation of Guō Ruòxū, later appended here because the Huàjué and Huàtí both contain Sī’s reports of his father’s words. We have deleted both of these two appendages: one duplicates Sī’s book, the other has no connection to it. But we have noted them in their old positions for the purpose of collation. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 51 (1786), second month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì.
Abstract
Guō Xī 郭熙 (c. 1020–c. 1090) was the dominant court painter of Shénzōng’s reign (1067–1085), the principal Northern Sòng successor to Lǐ Chéng 李成 (c. 919–c. 967), and the painter to whom Shénzōng entrusted the wall paintings of the new imperial pavilions. His son Guō Sī 郭思 (jìnshì 1082; held high frontier appointments in the QínFèng circuit under Huīzōng) collected and edited the father’s oral instruction, prefacing his own annotations in the body and adding two original chapters on the father’s surviving works and imperial reception. The Xǔ Guāngníng preface is dated Zhènghé 7 (1117), giving the composition window. The treatise’s principal contributions are the Sānyuǎn compositional doctrine; the doctrine that the painter, before approaching the silk, must achieve emotional and bodily clarity (“shǎnwù chéngxīn 散物澄心”); the explicit theorisation of landscape painting as a substitute for actually retiring into mountains; and the systematic vocabulary for representing the seasonal and atmospheric variations of mountain scenery. The Sìkù editors have purged from the received text four pseudepigraphic ancillaries (the so-called Shānshuǐ jué of Wáng Wéi, of Lǐ Chéng, of Jīng Hào, and Dǒng Yǔ’s Huàlóng jíyì) that Yuán and Míng editors had attached to the front, and have deleted two further duplicate appendages at the rear, restoring something close to the book as compiled by Sī in 1117.
Translations and research
- Bush, Susan, and Hsio-yen Shih, eds. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985 (the most accessible English version of the Shānshuǐ xùn).
- Sakanishi, Shio. An Essay on Landscape Painting. London: John Murray, 1935 (early translation of Línquán gāozhì).
- Maeda, Robert J. Two Sung Texts on Chinese Painting and the Landscape Styles of the 11th and 12th Centuries. New York: Garland, 1978.
- Murck, Alfreda. Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000 (uses the Sān-yuǎn doctrine extensively).
- Foong, Ping. The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015 (chap. on Guō Xī).
- Hironobu Kohara 古原宏伸. Sansuiga ron 山水画論. Kyoto: Bukkyō Geijutsu Gakkai, 1972.
Other points of interest
The Sānyuǎn doctrine articulated here (high distance, deep distance, level distance) becomes the standard typology for spatial recession in all subsequent Chinese landscape practice and theory, and is directly invoked in Japanese landscape painting and garden theory through Muromachi kanga.