Huà shānshuǐ xù 畫山水敘
Preface on the Painting of Landscapes by 宗炳 (Zōng Bǐng, 375–443, 劉宋, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
The earliest extant Chinese theoretical statement on landscape painting, by Zōng Bǐng 宗炳 (375–443), the LiúSòng painter, recluse, and lay-Buddhist disciple of Huìyuǎn 慧遠 of Dōnglínsì 東林寺. The text, extremely short (one juàn of about 600 characters), is preserved in Lìdài mínghuà jì 歷代名畫記 of Zhāng Yànyuǎn 張彥遠 (847; section on landscape) and in the Tàipíng yùlǎn. The Kanripo recension is the standard short text. Although usually listed as a xù 序 (preface), it is in fact a self-contained essay on the philosophical foundation, optical principles, and aesthetic purpose of landscape painting; the title-character xù (variant 敘) refers to the genre rather than to a preface to a longer work.
Abstract
The Huà shānshuǐ xù opens with the famous formulation that distinguishes the sage’s relation to the dào (the sage hán dào yìng wù 含道映物 — embodies the dào and reflects the things) from the worthy’s relation to it (the worthy chéng huái wèi xiàng 澄懷味像 — clarifies the breast and savours images), and then proceeds to ground landscape painting in this distinction: mountains and waters yǐ xíng méi dào 以形媚道 (charm the dào through their form), and the man of rén (humaneness) takes pleasure in them. The autobiographical middle section recounts Zōng’s lifelong wandering in Lúshān 廬山, Héngshān 衡山, the Jīng 荊 and Wū 巫 ranges, and his lament that age now prevents him from continuing — therefore he paints landscapes and arranges colours to compose these “cloudy ridges.” The text then sets out the foundational optical-perspectival argument of premodern Chinese landscape theory: although the Kūnlún 崑崙 is vast and the eye small, when viewed from a few lǐ away the great mountain may be encompassed in the inch-wide pupil; if a screen of plain silk is set up to receive the distant image, the form of the Kūnláng can be enclosed within a square inch (fāngcùn zhī nèi 方寸之內); a vertical stroke three cùn high stands for the height of a thousand rèn, a horizontal ink-mark of several chǐ embodies the recession of a hundred lǐ. The viewer’s eye and mind respond, “the spirit transcends and the principle is grasped” (shén chāo lǐ dé 神超理得). Zōng concludes with the closing manifesto of wò yóu 臥遊 (reclining travel): in retirement, regulating one’s qì, brushing one’s wine-cup, and sounding the qín, one opens the painting and silently faces it, “sitting and reaching to the four wildernesses” — and what does Zōng do besides? Chàng shén ér yǐ 暢神而已 — “I cause the spirit to flow, and that is all.”
The work is the foundational document for three central concepts of subsequent Chinese landscape theory: (1) the metaphysical grounding of landscape in dào, mediated through the Buddhist-Daoist concept of xíng (form) as the visible vehicle of the formless; (2) the geometric-perspectival theory of recession, anticipating by a millennium European discussions of perspective; and (3) the aesthetic theory of wò yóu — painting as the substitute for and the equivalent of bodily travel — which became the canonical justification of landscape painting and its viewing in subsequent Chinese culture. The Huà shānshuǐ xù belongs to the same LiúSòng moment as Wáng Wēi’s 王微 Xù huà 敘畫 (a parallel and contemporary essay) and the slightly earlier Yúntái shānjì 雲臺山記 of Gù Kǎizhī 顧愷之 (preserved in the same Lìdài mínghuà jì). Composition is securely bracketed: a terminus a quo of 420 (the founding of the LiúSòng) reflects the autobiographical reference to Zōng’s late-life situation; the terminus ante quem of 443 is his death.
Translations and research
- Bush, Susan, and Hsio-yen Shih, eds. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985 (rep. Hong Kong University Press, 2012). [The standard English source, with full annotated translation by Susan Bush of the Huà shān-shuǐ xù, pp. 36–38.]
- Bush, Susan. “Tsung Ping’s Essay on Painting Landscape and the ‘Landscape Buddhism’ of Mt. Lu.” In Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck, 132–164. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. [The fundamental Western analysis of the work in its lay-Buddhist Mt. Lú context.]
- Munakata, Kiyohiko. “Concepts of Lei and Kan-lei in Early Chinese Art Theory.” In Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Bush and Murck, 105–131. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
- Sullivan, Michael. The Birth of Landscape Painting in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.
- Powers, Martin J. “Discourses of Representation in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century China.” In The Language of Art History, ed. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Cahill, James. The Lyric Journey: Poetic Painting in China and Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. [Treats the Huà shān-shuǐ xù as the source of the wò-yóu tradition.]
- Yú Jiàn-huá 俞劍華 (ed.). Zhōng-guó huà-lùn lèi-biān 中國畫論類編. Beijing: Rén-mín měi-shù chū-bǎn-shè, 1957 (rep. 1986). [The Huà shān-shuǐ xù is the first item.]
Other points of interest
The closing four-character formula chàng shén ér yǐ 暢神而已 (“I cause the spirit to flow, and that is all”) and the closing rhetorical question shén zhī suǒ chàng, shú yǒu xiān yān 神之所暢, 孰有先焉 (“what could come before the spirit’s flowing?”) became the locus classicus for the theory of painting as a vehicle of shén — directly echoed by every subsequent landscape theorist from Jīng Hào 荊浩 (Bǐfǎ jì 筆法記) to Guō Xī 郭熙 (Línquán gāozhì 林泉高致) to Wáng Lǚ 王履 of the Míng. The work’s sustained Buddhist colour — Zōng was a lay disciple of Huìyuǎn — distinguishes it from the contemporary essay of Wáng Wēi.