Background

Examples of the main styles of contemporary Chinese painting in the traditional manner with a selected bibliography can be found at Styles of Painting.

Traditional categories or genres are noted after each painter:

• landscape paintings (山水画): includes "blue-and-green" landscapes (青綠山水) and "ink-and-wash" landscapes (水墨山水)--the former use bright blue, green and red mineral-based pigments to create a rich effect, the latter use mainly black ink and wash techniques to express the artist's conception of nature, his own emotions and individuality;
• bird and flower paintings (花鸟画): includes flowers, fruits, birds, animals, insects and fish;
• figure paintings (人物画): includes religious figures, historical subjects, and scenes of everyday life.

Chinese Texts

Chinese transcriptions and translations courtesy of Daniel von Brighoff unless otherwise noted. Some transcriptions may use the simpfied form of Chinese rather than the traditional form.

Chinese characters in the following pages are coded in Unicode and use fonts such as MingLiU, Arial Unicode MS, Verdana, etc. for display. If you can see the following characters for guo hua (traditional Chinese painting) then you are enabled for CJK display: 国画.

Access and Metadata

Clicking on the thumbnail pictures below each painter's entry on the following pages will bring up a larger version complete with metadata and translations/transcriptions when available. Metadata for each piece in the collection uses the Visual Resources Association's metadata scheme. The Type and Subject elements in this implementation of the VRA scheme use Library of Congress genre and subject terms.

• VRA metadata scheme (version 3.0);
• Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (TGM I);
• Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms (TGM II).

In all cases the metadata describes the original work, not the digital reproduction.

Collections

Artists with multiple works:

 Huang Yongyu 黃永玉 (flowers)
 Jianing 佳宁 (landscapes)
 Kaowen 考文 (figures, flowers)
 Li, Henry X. (Jiyilouzhu) b. 1959 (landscapes, birds)
 Li Huilian 李會連 (bamboo)
 Li Lianzhen (landscapes)
 Li Siyuan 李嗣源 (flowers, birds)
 Liu Ce 劉策 (landscapes)
 Shen Mei 沈梅, 1947- (flowers, birds)
 Wang Dachuan 王大川 (landscapes)
 Wang Jiashan 王佳山 (flowers)
 Wu Changan 吳長安 (landscapes)
 Wu Guanzhong 吴冠中 (landscapes, flowers)

Artists with single works

Landscapes: Gallery 1 | 2 | 3
Birds and flowers: Gallery 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Figures: Gallery 1

Unidentified Artists

Gallery 1