Study Of Bird And Flower Painting In The Tang Dynasty

According to the historical literature, an impression is given that a system of plant and animal painting was codified in the Tang Dynasty. However, the established methods fail to adequately explore this process of codification. One of the reasons for this is that the dating of Tang period plant and animal scroll-paintings is questionable. Connoisseurship offers few solutions. To help solve this problem we must also turn to archaeological materials. One learns from tomb paintings, excavated fabrics and utensils, and other archaeological artifacts, that figures of plants and animals had been popular, and there were many developments during the Tang Dynasty in depicting animals and plants, especially flowers. Furthermore, a compositional convention developed in which flowers, birds, rocks, grasses, and insects were organized in a fixed combinational framework. Considering that flowers were rarely represented in China before the introduction of Buddhism, influences from international cultures and artistic interaction must also be considered when attempting to explain how and why the representational methods originated. Based on these factors, my research will proceed from two questions: first, how did this specific picture composition develop, and, second, what was the symbolic meaning of such pictures in ancient Chinese culture? Though they belong to different systems, the scroll-paintings, tomb paintings, fabric and utensils, and other artifacts will be used as evidence to address the problem of plant and animal imagery of the Tang Dynasty. This paper will offer new evidence which will facilitate accurate dating of Tang scroll-paintings of plants and animals.