The literati painting became the mainstream in the Yuan Dynasty. Since there was no imperial academy for painting and only a few professional painters directly served for the imperial court, most paintings were the works of the high - ranking scholar-bureaucrats and the literati without official posts. Therefore, their creation was made in the relatively free atmosphere and most of their paintings represented their living environment, taste and ideal. It explained the abundance of paintings featuring landscape, withered wood, bamboo, stone, plum and orchid. Accordingly, figure paintings that directly reflected the then social life reduced. The works usually emphasized the literariness and calligraphic flavour, and particular emphasis was paid on the integration of poem, calligraphy and painting.
In terms of the creative thoughts, the painters in the Yuan Dynasty sought simplicity and freedom in painting, highlighting the natural outflow of subjective emotion. It was different from the court painters in the Song Dynasty, who pursued the perfection in painting skills and valued the form. In a nutshell, the paintings in the Yuan Dynasty represented the distinctive features of the time, which gave a boost to the development of the paintings in post - Yuan Dynasty days.
With a short span of 90 odd years during the Yuan Dynasty, there emerged a lot of great painters among whom the representative ones included Zhao Mengfu, Qian Xuan, Gao Kegong, Wang Yuan as well as the so-called Four Major Painters in the Yuan Dynasty: Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zhan and Wang Meng.
Editor: MetalAllen
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