The Charm of ink and Wash
1 min readInk and wash is a unique genre of traditional Chinese painting. It uses little or no color but applies black ink in different shades to white paper or silk. Ink and wash is just as important in traditional Chinese painting as oils in European painting.A typical representative of traditional Chinese painting, it is one of the styles that best represent the spirit of China’s fine arts.
Wang Wei(701-761),a famous Tang-dynasty (618-907) poet, is generally acknowledged as the first ink-and-wash painter in Chinese history. Yet what remains of his ink-and-wash work today is only a Northern-Song-dynasty(960-1127) copy of his A Brook in the Snow with his autograph.
This painting depicts a brook in the wild, using no color but black ink, yet still incredibly reproducing a carefree, peaceful snowbound world. In the later half of the ninth century, that is, from the end of the Tang Dynasty through to the early Song Dynasty (960-1279), ink-and-wash painting gradually evolved as the main form in traditional Chinese painting, its influence reaching farther and widerthan color painting. For a long time, the idea that”the ink and wash is supreme among all other styles of painting”has been the mainstream philosophy in traditional Chinese painting.
