The principal forms of traditional Chinese painting are hanging
scroll, album of paintings, fan surface and long horizontal scroll.
Hanging scrolls are both horizontal and vertical. They are mounted
and hung on the wall. For an album of paintings the artist paints
on a certain size of xuan paper, then binds a number of paintings
into an album, convenient for storage. The surface of both folding
fans and round fans is painted. Before people had electric fans
or air-conditioning, they used fans made of bamboo strips pasted
with paper or silk. Artists painted the fan's surface as recreation.
In time this developed into a form of painting that has been handed
down to the present. Folding fans, usually made of paper, are used
by men, while round fans, generally of silk, are used by women.
When artists paint on the silk, the fan appears fine and elegant.
The long horizontal scroll is also called a hand scroll. It is less
than fifty centimetres high, but several to a hundred metres long.
Pictures on long horizontal scrolls are not restricted as to time,
whether seasons or decades. A hundred or a thousand human figures
can be portrayed in one painting. After being mounted, it can be
appreciated section by section. Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival
(Qingming Festival, when Chinese people visit ancestral tombs, falls
on April 5 or 6 each year) is a famous horizontal scroll from the
Song Dynasty (960 -1279). The painting is 52.5 centimetres long.
Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival (part)
by Zhang Zheduan (Song Dynasty)
Traditional Chinese paintings can be classified according to subject
matter into figure paintings, landscapes and flower-and-bird paintings.
Landscapes represent a major category in traditional Chinese painting,
mainly depicting the natural scenery of mountains and rivers.
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