wind and rain and motion in classical chinese painting and in japanese art ... a scapbook, to be updated as and when ...

when first this page was almost completed, i inadvertently deleted it ... so i will start again and slowly cobble it together ...  i'll just be inserting links as and when i discover them ...

i had started out ... watchin rain falling on a temple in japan and wondering if chinese and japanese painters had a longer tradition than europeans of depicting wind and rain ?



but first i had to do some catch-up ...

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chin/hd_chin.htm



the first one with rain in its title ... Wu Zhen, Bamboo In Spring Rain

i can see the misty atmosphere but the rain isn't very clear

https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/wu-zhens-bamboo-in-spring-rain/



good intro to chinese classical art by mae anna pang ...

https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/three-perfections-poetry-calligraphy-and-painting-in-chinese-art/



intro to nature in chinese art ...

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cnat/hd_cnat.htm



intro to chinese painting during the yuan dynasty ...

https://occcricketstats.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/3_yuan.pdf



turns out the above is extracted from this ...

https://occcricketstats.wordpress.com/2018/12/03/a-history-of-chinese-art/



it didn't take long to find an example of the depiction of wind ... painted by zhao mengfu before 1322

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Mengfu



zhao mengfu's self-portrait ...

interestingly, zhao mengfu's wife, guan daosheng, was also a landscape painter of some note and she rendered this landscape of bamboos shrouded in mist and cloud ..

she is also remembered for this poem ...

Married Love by Guan Daosheng

You and I Have so much love, That it Burns like a fire, In which we bake a lump of clay Molded into a figure of you And a figure of me. Then we take both of them, And break them into pieces, And mix the pieces with water, And mold again a figure of you, And a figure of me. I am in your clay. In life we share a single quilt. In death we will share a single coffin.

more chinese rain ... but maybe only implicit rain

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1985.227.2/

next up ... Dai Jin, 1388 to 1462 ... this is the only image I've found so far with marks that are clearly intended to signify rain ...

https://www.comuseum.com/painting/masters/dai-jin/boat-returning-amid-wind-and-rain/






eventually, in japan ... there was an artistic storm of rendered rain ...


from hokusai's manga, volume seven ...

kuniyoshi ...  Life of Nichiren: Prayer for Rain, c.1835

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utagawa_Kuniyoshi




Toyoshige, c.1830

Night Rain at Oyama: the Peak seen from the Fudo Temple in the foreground (Oyama yau, Zen fudo yori chojo no zu)
Toyokuni II Utagawa (Toyoshige)
Date: c. 1830

hiroshige, a younger rival of hokusai ... sudden shower in shono

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshige



my favourite by hokusai, from the mangas ...

found in ... https://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3263896.pdf.bannered.pdf


you can read the whole of volume seven here .... https://www.hokusai-katsushika.org/manga-seventh.html .... it contains several masterpieces

elton hayes' version of the owl and the pussycat was so much better than stravinsky's ...

the owl and the pussycat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1px6YW6xh5g



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_Hayes

Zhao Mengfu, and his supremely talented missus, Guan Daosheng

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Mengfu


http://www.chinaonlinemuseum.com/painting-zhao-mengfu.php

this painting, is by Zhao Mengfu's talented wife, Guan Daosheng ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Daosheng

https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/guan-daosheng-1262-1319

One of Zhao Mengfu's best and simplest paintings was a “copy” or re-interpretation of this one by his wife, which he painted after her death and shortly before his own.

A short anecdote about their relationship ... In those days, court officials could afford more than one wife but the pair seemed happy enough.  However, later in life she learned that he was contemplating the acquisition of another concubine.  She wrote him this little poem and left it in a place where he would soon chance upon it.

You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Moulded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mould again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share a single coffin.

It was interesting for me to see how these painters dealt with space and perspective and temporal narratives, and how their Buddhist faith and studies led them towards a simpler style ... I had begun my inquiry whilst searching for any classical Chinese paintings that might show rain as it falls ... I only found one some time after these two lived  .... but the ramble through Chinese painting, and then wondering how they might have influenced great Japanese artists, eventually led me on to Tanaka Maho's excellent summary of Hockney's deeply informed responses to temporal and spatial perspectives in Chinese and Japanese art ... which I would like to encourage people to read ...

http://www.bigakukai.jp/aesthetics_online/aesthetics_21/text21/text21_tanakamaho.pdf

DJ Cummerbund's inspired mashup ...

RUSH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WddSQVTwj_Y




plus




KELIS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6yShQ1mmcw




and with a bit of digital wriggle-room
equals




DJ CUMMERBUND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B88TVYzhCPY

in japan on the train to okutama

netsuke ...

Little Gidding ... known to me for many years as the title of one of TS Eliot's Four Quartets ( the last and maybe the loveliest ) ... but I've only just come across the The Little Gidding Harmonies ... and the Little Gidding Concordances ... so now I know why he was there

http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2013/03/faqs-on-little-gidding-harmonies.html

http://littlegiddingharmonies.org/

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315613772/chapters/10.4324/9781315613772-9

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-little-gidding-concordance/the-little-gidding-concordances?fbclid=IwAR2dP95noCuFU4aVAEiTj45dJunJb4NmrKIl7ZOUDAgZt1fGSqbOqHQZMkc




of course ... as ever, Whitney Trettien was already on the case ...
http://blog.whitneyannetrettien.com/2014/02/layouts-patterns-networks.html




and later, still ...

frances quarles extrapolates saint john's words on to the subject of bowling ... in puritanical england, some clergymen took a dim view ..

https://manifold.umn.edu/read/untitled-a5533014-27c2-48fd-a0fb-498976cbe4da/section/653a6a70-f1f6-41ea-839e-917db4a2fc56

graham sutherland illustrating frances quarles ... an original 1943 lithograph sold in tenby museum this week ... turns out to be a late manifestation of a long-lived publishing format

So have I seen a well-built castle, stand 
Upon the tip-toes of a lofty hill, 
Whose active power commands both sea & land, 
And curbs the pride of the bleag’rers’ will; 
At length her ag’d foundation fails her trust, 
And lays her tott’ring ruins in the dust. 

So have I seen the BLAZING TAPER shoot 
Her golden head into the feeble air; 
Whose shadow guilding ray, spread round about, 
Makes the foul face of blade brow’d darkness fair; 
Till at the length her waisting glory fades, 
And leaves the night to her invet’rate shades 



Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man published in 1637, was the sequel to Francis Quarles' best-selling Emblems (1635) which was lavishly illustrated, containing five books of meditative verse. The poems are introduced by a scriptural motto, then a commentary based on quotations from various sources, and at the end closure is achieved with a short didactic epigram. To Francis Quarles, an emblem is but a short parable and the verse puts the visual into the mental. In this way, the words and pictures complement each other, therefore having a double impact on the reader.

Sutherland's litho was from a set of three ... they are the first three images in this set ... http://www.williamweston.co.uk/item/artist_previous/233/1


there still exists an imprint of all three Sutherland designs on one sheet ...
https://www.gazette-drouot.com/lots/10311506

later ... it seems that "emblem books" were a popular renaissance publishing format ...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26402658?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblem_book



Ah-ha ! After MUCH GOOGLE-ING ... Here's some proper scholarship relating to the printing of the Emblems ...  by Whitney Trettien 

"It is the argument of this chapter and this monograph more broadly that the creativity and cultural work of books like Theophila become legible when we read them not as texts but as multidimensional media objects designed with meaning and purpose."

https://manifold.umn.edu/read/untitled-a5533014-27c2-48fd-a0fb-498976cbe4da/section/653a6a70-f1f6-41ea-839e-917db4a2fc56

david inshaw ... larger images of his paintings find their way on to the internet now and then ... these are from all periods and they are in no particular order

crows and ravens and jackdaws and magpies in art

andrea kowch




























peter de seve

bruegel the elder

william heath robinson

c. f. tunnicliffe

arthur rackham

audubon

rudi hurzlmeier

david inshaw