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Shanshuijia fa 山水家法

May 3, 2023 © Ulrich Theobald

Shanshuijia fa 山水家法 "The standards of landscape painters" is a book on landscape painting written by Rao Ziran 饒自然 (1312-1365), courtesy name Taixu 太虛, style Yusi Shanren 玉笥山人. Of this book, only the chapter Huiziong shi'er ji 繪宗十二忌 has survived. In the original version, finished in 1350 and consisting of just one fascicle, the appendix was called Shanshuihua yishi'er ji 山水畫一十二忌 "Twelve taboos in landscape painting".

This text was influenced by Jing Hao's 荊浩 (fl. 920) Bifaji 筆法記, who analysed the mistakes of shapes (where less shapes should be), and no shapes (where shapes should be). The main text discusses the strengths and weaknesses of twenty important painters from the Tang 唐 (618-907) and Song 宋 (960-1279) periods. Mistakes could be made in the general arrangement, the realization of distances, missing "energetic veins" (qipai 氣脈) in mountains, the depiction of flat and steep areas, roads, rivers passing through the image, the dimension of stones, branches of trees, faces and movements of persons, the distribution and angles of buildings, the representation of various shapes of water and the application of dots.

The oldest print of the texts is found in Luo Kongjian's 羅孔兼 Gujin huajian 古今畫鑒 from the Ming period 明 (1368-1644).

Source:
Xue Yongnian 薛永年 (1992). "Shanshuijia fa 山水家法", in Zhongguo da baike quanshu 中國大百科全書, part Meishu 美術 (Beijing/Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe), Vol. 2, 710.