Contrastive Study Of Ni Zan And Gong Xian's Landscape Paintings

It is noticeable that traditional Chinese landscape paintings experienced great change in the chronological order of Chinese dynasties. The present paper focuses on the contrastive study of two traditional Chinese landscape artists—Ni Zan and Gong Xian, in the terms of the life, the practice, the idea and the influence.Ni Zan's paintings of simple, almost barren, unpeopled landscapes as expressive of a longing for a simpler world is unparallel. He advocated that painting should not seek being similar to shape, but should execute in elegant and free atmosphere. Short, broad vertical strokes characterize Gong's paintings, which typically contain no human figures; yet in contrast to that earlier artist, his paintings are rich with ink that produces unusually dense and even forbidding landscapes. A specifically densely textured, monumental landscape style in which he was able to suggest volume and mass by varying the density and darkness of his ink dots indicates his innovation and makes him outstanding during the early years of Qing dynasty.The present study ascertains these two artists' positions in traditional Chinese landscape paintings. The researcher thinks that their specific styles in landscapes become an indispensable part in the development of landscapes and they make great contributions to the development of traditional Chinese landscape paintings.