After the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, foreign trade was further developed, and the export of tea and porcelain was exchanged for a large amount of wealth to maintain one of the largest standing armies in Chinese history, but the Northern Song Dynasty spent too long on the battlefield and gradually exhausted the imperial court and the people.
In desperation, the Northern Song Dynasty began to exchange "old coins" for peace, and most of the taxes were supplied to the surrounding Western Xia and Liao states, and gradually the national strength was exhausted. A large number of people began to flee, or fell into the grass to the water, or starved and cold to the mountains, and the painter could only use the brush to express the yearning for peace in the current situation and the pursuit of quiet landscapes.
Since the Qin and Han dynasties, there have been legends that after death, the soul will return to nature and reach a beautiful paradise, this place is in the ethereal overseas immortal mountain, ordinary people can not reach, only after death into a god can see the true appearance. Qin Shi Huang once sent a team to find this place, and even refining Dan Medicine and making "Boshan Furnace" to pin his feelings. The court painters were also full of all kinds of fantasies about this place, using brushes to depict this square world, just a kind of artistic conception, without a huge story narrative and character context, landscape became the subject word of painting.
Chinese landscape painting first appeared in early tombs or Buddhist murals, as the background of the tomb owner and Buddhist figures, used to set off the storyline and life deeds, the more famous is the Thangka in Tibetan Buddhism, which depicts the beauty of the paradise world. The Sui Dynasty painter Zhan Ziqian is known as the "ancestor of Tang painting", and his works are mostly found on the murals of monasteries in Luoyang and Other places, which is quite similar to the magnificent scenery in the "Wonderland" presented by the Boshan Furnace.
In the Song Dynasty, landscape painting became an independent genre, and the royal painting academy "Hanlin Painting Academy" was specially established, among which the Xuanhe Painting Academy during the Song Huizong period was the most famous.
Emperor Huizong of Song also presided over the compilation of a collection of masterpieces of the past titled Xuanhe Pictorial Notation, which divided ancient and modern pictures into ten categories: Daoshi, Figures, Palaces, Fan, Dragon Fish, Landscapes, Animals, Flowers and Birds, Ink Bamboo, Vegetables and Fruits. Landscape painting ranked sixth. Xuanhe Painting Academy is the peak era of Northern Song Dynasty painting, Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming River Map", Wang Ximeng's "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" and other famous works are based on this, which can be described as a hundred schools of contention. However, the Song Dynasty, which shined artistically, could not resist the invasion of the north.
In 1126, the Jin army attacked the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Bieliang, the abdicated Song Huizong and his son Song Qinzong were captured by the Jin army and escorted to the north, The Capital was attacked by the Jin army, a large number of residents fled outward, there was a painter over sixty years old, also fled the capital with the flow of people, this painter named Li Tang, is the Song Huizong Xuanhe painter in the painting academy.
An old man, at the end of the waterway, abandoned his boat and landed on the shore, walked through several wooden bridges, a few huts, and on the path on the Taihang Mountain, surrounded by springs and dense woods, and from time to time there were birds flying from the forest. This picture is somewhat similar to the landscape in his painting, with grass huts and thatched eaves and sparse hedges. Li Tang staggered forward in loneliness, but he did not enter the imaginary landscape secret realm, but was caught by local thieves.
It is said that they are thieves, but in fact, they are just a group of locals who gather in the chaos of war to protect themselves, and they are probably like the good men of Liangshan, not willing to fall into the grass, but have the confusion of not knowing where to go. The gang of thieves opened Li Tang's luggage, found no valuable belongings, but found paint and paper and pencil. This thief did not take away the old painter's little luggage, let Go of Li Tang, and made a surprising decision, he and Li Tang walked all the way together, crossed the war-torn Yangtze River, and came to Hangzhou.
A court painter full of landscape ideals, a thief hidden in the landscape, let the two of them meet, probably the most amazing joke made by heaven about this era. This thief was named Xiao Zhao, who studied under Li Tang and later became a well-known painter, entering the court painting academy of Emperor Gaozong of Song and becoming the head of the painting academy.
After the southern crossing, Li Tang became the founder of the Southern Song Dynasty painting circle twenty years later, and together with Liu Songnian, Ma Yuan, and Xia Gui, he was collectively known as the "Four Greats of the Southern Song Dynasty", and Li Tang left many works with cattle as the theme and allusions to fishing and farming. The "Wind Map of WanguSong", which he painted in the painting academy, is one of the few Song Dynasty paintings handed down today, preserved in the "National Palace Museum" in Taipei.
Together with Guo Xi's "Early Spring Map" and Fan Kuan's "Journey to the Mountains", it is called "the three masterpieces of Song painting", and this work by Li Tang is the last painting with a clear date in the Northern Song Dynasty. The disciple Xiao Zhao, who received in the mountain adventure, not only painted a lot of landscape paintings, but also painted a lot of works related to the theme of anti-gold, such as "Guangwu Crossing river map", "Zhongxing Ruiying Map", etc. He was good at strange pine stones and canglang ancient fields, "looking at the waves and waves, the wind of Yuntun", quite the charm of the Taihang Mountains.
However, the beautiful fantasies of the Song Dynasty painters for the mysterious wonderland could not resist the iron horses of the north, nor could they let the Song people reorganize the mountains and rivers, and the Song Dynasty could only be difficult to maintain in half of the country. Such a beautiful landscape imagination became a world that the painters of the Song Dynasty could never reach.