Chinese Scrolls in a timeline from Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
Open Access API from The Smithsonian Institution
Design by Zora Wan
With more than thirteen thousand objects dating from Neolithic times (circa 7000–circa 2000 BCE) to the present, the Freer and Sackler collections possess one of the finest museum holdings of Chinese art in the world. In addition to containing numerous masterworks, the collections reflect all major periods and materials of artistic production. Special strengths include remarkable ancient jades and bronzes, early Buddhist sculpture, imperial and trade ceramics, lacquer, classical paintings, and calligraphy, all of which are among the greatest treasures of Chinese art outside of China.
About Chinese Painting
Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Traditional painting involves essentially the same techniques as calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black ink or coloured pigments; oils are not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular materials on which paintings are made are paper and silk. The finished work can be mounted on scrolls, such as hanging scrolls or handscrolls. Traditional painting can also be done on album sheets, walls, lacquerware, folding screens, and other media.
Painting during the Song Dynasty (960–1127) reached a new level of sophistication with further development of landscape painting. The shan shui style painting—”shan” meaning mountain and “shui” meaning river—became prominent in Chinese landscape art. The emphasis on landscape painting in the Song period was grounded in Chinese philosophy. The paintings of Northern Song officials were influenced by their political ideals of bringing order to the world and tackling the largest issues affecting the whole of society; their paintings often depicted huge, sweeping landscapes.
South Song Dynasty
Southern Song officials were more interested in reforming society from the bottom up and on a much smaller scale, a method they believed had a better chance for eventual success; their paintings often focused on smaller, visually closer, and more intimate scenes, while the background was often depicted as bereft of detail as a realm without concern for the artist or viewer.
Yuan Dynasty
During the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), painters joined the arts of painting, poetry, and calligraphy by inscribing poems on their paintings. These three arts worked together to express the artist's feelings more completely than one art could do alone. Yuan emperor Tugh Temur (r. 1328, 1329–1332) was fond of Chinese painting and became a creditable painter himself.
Ming Dynasty
Beginning in the 13th century, the tradition of painting simple subjects—a branch with fruit, a few flowers, or one or two horses—developed. Narrative painting, with a wider color range and a much busier composition than Song paintings, was immensely popular during the Ming period (1368–1644).
Qing Dynasty
Painting during the Song Dynasty (1128–1279) reached a new level of sophistication with further development of landscape painting. The shan shui style painting—”shan” meaning mountain and “shui” meaning river—became prominent in Chinese landscape art. The emphasis on landscape painting in the Song period was grounded in Chinese philosophy.