ELSLEY ZEITLYN LECTURE ON CHINESE ARCHAEOLOGY AND CULTURE

The Origins of Chinese Landscape Painting: Evidence from Archaeology

Professor Jessica Rawson FBA, Merton College, Oxford

19 November 2001

Chinese landscape painting, particularly in black ink on silk or paper, is one of the renowned art forms of China. Mountains, bare trees and water are the usual themes of these landscape paintings. In the West, with a tradition of painting from nature, it has been rather too easy to assume that the magnificent early Chinese landscape paintings originated in the representation of mountainous scenery in China. This seems to be far from the case. The earliest surviving examples of depictions of mountains occur in small models intended for incense burners and in the scenes carved on walls of tombs of the second to first centuries BC. In these tombs, the mountains represent hazardous areas, which were to be crossed to reach the immortal lands of spirits and deities. The models represent paradises. It is in this connection that we must search the origin of Chinese landscape painting. Indeed, the talk will show that a tradition of landscape painting was established, not through the depiction of actual mountains, but through the visualisation of the areas of the world where deities might be thought to live. The talk will trace the beginnings of representation of hilly landscapes down to the 10th century AD.

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