Painting in Tang Dynasty

     In the Tang period, the secular landscape tradition dominated the pictorial arts. Three painters' names survive, along with probable copies of their work. Wang Wei, a reclusive landowner, preferred snowscapes, such as a copy formerly in the Ch'ing household collection and now presumably lost. A model for later amateur painters, Wang Wei's work displays an intimacy and quiet melancholy that found favor among later artists. In contrast to the style of Wang Wei is the style of a father and son, Li Ssu-hsun and Li Chao-tao (flourished about 670-735). A Sung-period copy in their style, Ming Huang's Journey to Shu (National Palace Museum, T'aipei, Taiwan), documents the exile of a Tang monarch. It is done in bright greens and blues like many Tang landscape paintings. The monumental quality of the T'aipei painting-with its outcropped rocky ledges and heavily foliated trees-presents an impressive panorama. This style differed considerably from the simpler compositions of such painters as Wang Wei.Portrait painting, which began in the Han era, was refined in the Tang period. Emperors customarily commissioned portraits of themselves and of past rulers for the imperial collection. One example, portraying 13 rulers from the Han to Sui dynasty, was executed by Yen Li-pen, the foremost Tang portraitist (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Burial chambers were also decorated with the painted likenesses of the deceased and family members.