The Piling School was a genre of

Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as ''guó huà'' (), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western style ...

, named for its place of origin, now

Changzhou Changzhou ( Changzhounese: ''Zaon Tsei'', ) is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling and Jinling. Located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, Changzhou borders the provin ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

province. The style was influenced by contact with Japan, and examples are found almost exclusively in Japan and particularly in collections associated with the great Japanese

Buddhist monasteries Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

Origin

Such paintings and associated art works are a reflection of the vigorous medieval overseas trade between China and Japan. Piling () itself was a part of

close to

Lake Tai Taihu (), also known as Lake Tai or Lake Taihu, is a lake in the Yangtze Delta and one of the largest freshwater lakes in China. The lake is in Jiangsu province and a significant part of its southern shore forms its border with Zhejiang. With ...

in Jiangsu Province. Many other genre artists can be associated with this general area. Although their surviving works are few, the clear influence of their painting can be readily seen in shards of Yuan period blue-and-white porcelain from the

Jingdezhen Jingdezhen is a prefecture-level city, in northeastern Jiangxi province, with a total population of 1,669,057 (2018), bordering Anhui to the north. It is known as the "Porcelain Capital" because it has been producing Chinese ceramics for at leas ...

production area.

Categorization

Works of the Piling School may be rightly regarded as

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...

or popular works that have no association with named artists. An exception are the

hanging scroll A hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit East Asian painting and calligraphy. The hanging scroll was displayed in a room for appreciation; it is to be distinguished from the handscroll, which was narrower and ...

s in the Chion-in Monastery collection in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

that bear seal designating the “Lotuses and Birds” compositions as done by a “Mr. Yu from Piling.” Mr. Yu is elsewhere identified as a Yu Ziming, active in the late 13th century. Yu was clearly a master of a local tradition of genre painting that specialized in plants, flowers, birds, insects and other genre subjects.

Manners

A manner of painting in this school of painting was the ''

mogu Mogu () is a painting skill or technique in traditional Chinese painting. It literally means "boneless". On paintings in the style of mogu, forms are made by ink and color washes rather than by outlines. Derivation of the name There are mainly ...

'' (沒骨) or “boneless” style which eschewed clear outlines in ink for washes in color or monochrome ink itself.

Examples in Exhibitions

The “Egrets and Lotuses” scrolls now in the

Tokyo National Museum The or TNM is an art museum in Ueno Park in the Taitō ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the four museums operated by the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage ( :ja:国立文化財機構), is considered the oldest national museum in Japan, ...

are typical of works closer to the year 1300. They display a trend toward pattern and professional artisanship, away from the creativity that originally characterized the school. The "Birds and Lotuses” scroll reproduced with this article can be easily seen as another example of this period work with its exclusive ink wash and stylized positioning of the birds. The earlier scrolls in the Chion-in Monastery however are examples of works displaying a greater animation and with their use of color a greater sensuous appeal.

References

*Yabe Yoshiaki, ''Yuan Underglaze Blue Porcelain'', in Toki daikei (A Collection of Ceramics), vol. 41, Tokyo, 1974, pp. 119–120. *Toda Tadasuke, ''Suiboku bijitsu daikei'' (A Collection of Monochrome Ink Paintings), vol. 3, p. 173. *''Song Paintings from Japanese Collections'', Museum Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, 1989, pp. 76–77. {{DEFAULTSORT:Chinese Piling Paintings Chinese painting