Bird-and-flower painting


Bird-and-flower painting is a kind of Chinese painting prevalent in East Asia named after its subject matter. Normally, most bird-and-flower paintings belong to the scholar-artist style of Chinese painting.

History

According to Chinese tradition, bird-and-flower painting covers "flowers, birds, fish, and insects". It can thus deal with a wide range of natural topics, including flowers, fish, insects, birds, pets etc.
The huaniao hua or "bird-and-flower painting" is proper of 10th century China. The most representative artists are Huang Quan 哳㥳 and Xu Xi 徐熙. They are the masters of two schools: the first school was led by Huang Quan. It is characterised by an "outline" method of brush work, with emphasis on bright colours filling a meticulously outline. The other school was led by Xu Xi and typically used techniques associated with ink-and-wash painting.
The bird-and-flower motif started appearing in Japanese art around the Muromachi period during the 14th century, and developed its own distinct style. It also entered ukiyo-e woodblock printing, where it was known as kachō-e. Especially the shin hanga movement produced a number of works with this motif starting in the Meiji era. Artists working with this were Ohara Koson and Ito Sozan, as well as Imao Keinen.

Varieties

According to painting technique: