Flower and Bird Painting in the Five Dynasties

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The flower-and-bird painting played an important role in Chinese painting history. The subject matters of painting were more extended than those of Sui and Tang dynasties. Painting skills were also improved. There were not only fine paintings with meticulous sketches and abundant elegant colors, but also water-and-ink painting with ink sketches and various mixed colors which was the foundation for freehand flower-and-bird brushwork. Huang Quan and Xu Xi created their own painting system with different styles. Huang’s style showed more wealth and nobleness, whileXu Xi’s style was full of wildness. The two styles became the origin for the later flower-and-bird painters and influenced their aesthetic orientation. There were also painters having special talent in the depiction of a certain image, for example, Madame Li, the very first one who painted ink bamboo. She was forcibly seized by Guo Chongtao, Bandit-suppression Commissioner for Later Tang after the occupation of the Shu Kingdom. Madame Li was really unhappy. She often sat alone at the southern room.

Outside the room there were bamboo dancing under the moon and shadowed the window with poetic grace. So she used brush pen to counterdraw the bamboos on the window paper, which was considered as the beginning of the ink bamboo painting. Emperor of Southern Tang Li Yu, and painter Tang Xiya were both good at writing in bamboos and wood using a calligraphic strokes named gold-file strokes. These demonstrated the close relation between the development of painting and calligraphy.

Important flower-and-bird painters include the following: Huang Quan(?-965), with Yaoshu as his courtesy name, was from Chengdu (Chengdu in Sichuan today). When he was young, he had learned painting from Diao Guangyin,a famous painter who moved to Sichuan at late Tang dynasty. Later he learned painting from Li Sheng, Sun Wei, etc. He was accomplished in paintings of figures, ghost and immortals, scenery, pine trees and rocks, dragon and river, especially in meticulous flower-and-bird painting. Huang Quan had once held the postin Imporial Art Academy in Western Shu Kingdom. The subject matters in his paintings were mainly precious and auspicious birds, rare and strange flowers in palaces. He was very observant and the meticulous sketch, elegant colors, and unique style usedearned him the honor “Wealthy and Noble Huang Style”. His works Sketch of Precious Birds,a textbook for his followers, have been handed down to posterity. The turtles, insects, birds in this painting were all depicted meticulously with vivid and lifelike images.

Xu Xi was from either Zhongling(near Nanchang, Jiangxi) or Jinling (Nanjing in Jiangsu today). He was a painter lived in Southern Tang dynasty. He was born to a noble family yet he had no interest in being officials. He was quite into an elegant yet simple and relaxed life, with time observing flowers and bamboos, water bird and fish, vegetables and seedlings in the garden or the wild field. Because of thedelicate observation and depiction, his flower-and-bird paintings were really lifelike and infectious. He would first use water-and-ink painting skills to draw the branches, leaves, pistil and calyx of the flower, and then add colors. His painting was known as “Wild and Unrestrained Xu Xi Style”, which is another flower-and-bird painting school other than the “Luxurious and Noble Huang Quan Style”.