A Study On The Origin Of Earlier-Qing Orthodox-Art

The present dissertation is a tentative exploration of how Earlier-Qing Orthodox-Art to be the orthodox school of the traditional Chinese painting earlier in Qing Dynasty. For one thing, Dong Qichang, who performed a historical innovation into the prototypical South China Landscape Painting, reconstructed the traditional theoretical framework of South China Landscape Painting such that the neo-orthodox design of this school was established after his systematic and overall summaries. Furthermore, Four Wangs (Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Hui and Wang Yuanqi) then inherited and enhanced Dong's theory as well as his neo-orthodox design, and such new round of innovation endowed their school with implicatures of both Zen Buddhism and Confucianism. For another thing, earlier in Qing Dynasty, the dynasts turned their culture policies into the milder orientation in order to consolidate their supreme authority on the one hand, and to rule effectively over the intelligentsia on the other hand. So in Kangxi Period the fact that the government authorized and advocated Four Wangs' contribution, in fact, is another key reason to make Earlier-Qing Orthodox-Art the orthodox school. What should be further mentioned is that Emperor of Kangxi Period, an enthusiast of Traditional Chinese Art, who was marvelously wrapped up in Dong Qichang's paintings, encouraged indirectly the later popular or folk preference to the art of such school, and finally made Four Wangs the leader artists earlier in Qing Dynasty. Moreover, in the post-Kangxi period the reason that Earlier-Qing Orthodox-Art successfully handed down generation by generation its orthodox identity can be regarded as the diachronic extension of such identity firmly consolidated in Kangxi Period.