GARDENS AND LANDSCAPE PAINTING
January 1982
To construct a diminutive scenic setting, people of the Yuan used nothing but trees, rocks and low-lying ponds, and casually laid them out along with pavilions, terraces, hedges and winding trails that set off each other to conjure up a divine ambience of inexhaustible comfort and leisure from which visitors would be reluctant to tear themselves away.
This remark by the early-Qing painter Yun Ge (1633-1690) offers valuable reference to the study of Yuan-dynasty gardens, and shows how difficult it is to dwell upon Chinese gardens if you know little of the principles and theories of Chinese painting. Chinese gardens and painters have become almost inseparable since the Yuan. The garden known as "Pure Rarity Belvedere," where the studio of Ni Zan (1301-1374) is located, exudes the natural beauty of mountains and rocks. The Small-Rock Mountain Abode built by Shitao (1642-c. 1707) is still there for all to see in Yangzhou. Virtually every famous landscape garden-maker is an accomplished painter, but their fame in painting is often eclipsed by their prestige in garden-making.
From the Yuan on, realistic painting gradually gave way to freehand brushwork that stresses imagery and sentiment in abstract and succinct ways—which are also indispensible elements with which to move the sky and contract the land in Chinese garden-making. The emphasis on imagery and the quest for spiritual resonance are combined in one in this style of painting to embody lofty sentiments and convey meanings beyond sound and rhythm, which, too, is essential to the craft of Chinese gardens. In short, painting implies poetry, and gardens allude to images portrayed in painting. Therefore, poetic sentiment and picturesque allusion provide the guideline for the making of Chinese gardens.
A painter is particular about the position of a subject in his work, whereas a garden-maker is scrupulous with the layout of a garden he wants to make. When an artificial mountain is built, fabulous veins and textures in the component rocks are much sought after, whereas texturing brushwork is paramount when rocks are being portrayed in a painting. Landscape painting gives prominence to the sequence of subjects and momentum, which are also emphasized more than anything else in garden-making, as the sequence of subjects invites the visitor to watch while sitting down, and the momentum entices him into the scenery thus built. A garden is a three-dimensional picture that changes rain or shine, day or night more than a painting can. As to planning the mountains and shaping the waters in a garden by patterning after natural landscape, each has its own paradigms to go by.
Drawing upon the best texturing brushwork of all the famous painters dating back to the Song and the Yuan, the builder of the artificial mountain in Suzhou's Beauty-Encircled Mountain Abode was easily as preeminent to Chinese rockwork as Li Bai (701-762) and Du Fu (712-770) are to Chinese poetry. The metamorphosis of artificial mountains through the ages is also intimately associated with changes in the styles of painting. The elegant but massive artificial mountains built during the Qianlong reign (1736-1795) of the Qing are comparable to the paintings of their day, while those built under the Tongzhi (1862-1875) and Guangxu (1875-1908) reigns are as petty and fragile as the style of paintings of their time. Indeed, artificial mountains born of a particular period cannot be judged without looking into the style of painting of their time.
Rocks come in a good variety, and their veins and textures vary as well. Similarly, every possible school of texturing brushwork in painting can always shine forth on its own. Just as Shitao says,
Peaks tally with texturing brushstrokes;
Texturing brushwork stems from peaks.
It is almost impossible to paint rocks without texturing brushstrokes. The differences in such techniques give rise to different schools of painting. Given the vast differences between rock veins and texturing brushwork, an able artist would not apply techniques designed for Lake Tai rocks on the dainty bamboo-and-rock paintings of Ni Zan, nor would he use yellow stones to build the artificial mountains portrayed in the paintings of Wang Meng (1308-1385)1, the "Woodcutter from the Yellow Crane Mountain." Those who are ignorant of the diverse schools of painting and their respective portrayal techniques can never come up with an impressive artificial mountain. Knowledge and cultural attainment enable an artificial mountain builder to apply rocks the way a painter manoeuvres his brush, so that the peaks and dales in his creations bear a close resemblance to those depicted in a master painter's work. Painters, inspired by real mountains and rivers, set styles and invent techniques for their works, whereas artificial mountain builders employ these painters' styles and techniques to recreate landscape with rocks. It goes without saying that quite a few artificial mountains are patterned after real mountains, but if a builder, instead of consulting painting theories and assimilating painters' texturing techniques to improve on what he sees from a model mountain, mechanically copies a prototype's beauty and ugliness, his creation is bound to lack picturesque values.
In terms of shape, color and height, the flowers and trees in a Chinese garden are compatible with those depicted in a painting. The atmosphere portrayed in the line, "Weathered vines, old trees and sleepy crow; tiny bridge, flowing stream and family," is appreciated by men of letters, landscape gardeners and painters alike because it accords with the goal of their shared pursuit for beauty, and because the various elements are grouped exactly as they are depicted in a painting. Paintings are done on paper, whereas the Chinese garden uses a white-washed wall as its backdrop, which, with flowers and trees tossing their shadows onto it, looks exactly like a painting in itself.
[Zhang Lian] designed artificial mountains with original conceptions and built them by adopting the painting techniques of Li Cheng (919-967) and Dong Yuan (?-c. 962) of the Southern Tang (937-962), as well as the "Great Eccentric Taoist" (1269-1354) and the "Woodcutter from Yellow Crane Mountain" of the Yuan.2 Artificial mountains created in this way feature fantastic peaks and ravines and cascading rapids in a space that twists and turns until it tapers away into the distance. With painstaking efforts, his craftsmanship of such an artificial mountain excels nature.
The reason why the great master Zhang Lian (1587-1673) could also accomplish so much in building artificial mountains for the Chinese gardens is amply explicated in this passage.