Song Landscape Painting Tradition

Timeline

1. 960–1127Kaifeng · HenanThe Northern Song court painting academy produced many panoramic landscape paintings in Kaifeng; Fan Kuan's 'Travelers among Mountains and Streams' and Guo Xi's 'Early Spring' established the 'three distances' perspective and a rich, vigorous brushwork style, making landscape painting the highest achievement of Song dynasty painting.
2. 1127–1220Lin'an · ZhejiangAfter the Song court moved south, the painting academy relocated to Lin'an; Li Tang pioneered a new Southern Song landscape style, shifting composition from panoramic to cropped partial views, with brushwork becoming simpler, crisper, and clearer, laying the foundation for the Ma-Xia school.
3. 1221–1230Lin'an · ChinaIn the 1220s, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui painted 'one-corner' and 'half-side' landscapes at the Lin'an academy, using large areas of blank space to create an ethereal mood, representing the aesthetic peak of Southern Song landscape painting and influencing later literati painting and Japanese ink painting.
4. 1230–1279China · ChinaIn the late Southern Song, landscape painting continued amid warfare; after the fall of Song, its brushwork paradigms were inherited and transformed by Yuan dynasty literati painting, and Song landscape painting has continued to be emulated and studied as a classic paradigm in East Asian art history.