The Piling School (毗陵畫派), also called Changzhou School (常州畫派), was a genre of

Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as , meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western styles of art which b ...

, named for its place of origin, now

Changzhou Changzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu, China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling, and Jinling. Located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, Changzhou borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the west, Zhen ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...

province. The style was influenced by contact with Japan, and examples are found almost exclusively in Japan and particularly in collections associated with the great Japanese

Buddhist monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may ...

Origin

Such paintings and associated art works are a reflection of the vigorous medieval overseas trade between China and Japan. Piling () itself was a part of

close to

Lake Tai Taihu (), also known as Lake Tai or Lake Taihu, is a lake in the Yangtze Delta and the third largest freshwater lake in China. The lake is in Jiangsu province and a significant part of its southern shore forms its border with Zhejiang. With ...

in Jiangsu Province. Many other genre artists can be associated with this general area. Although their surviving works are few, the clear influence of their painting can be readily seen in shards of Yuan period blue-and-white porcelain from the

Jingdezhen Jingdezhen is a prefecture-level city in eastern Jiangxi province with a total population of 1,669,057 (2018), bordering Anhui to the north. It is known as the "Porcelain Capital" because it has been producing Chinese ceramics for at least 1,0 ...

production area.

Categorization

Works of the Piling School may be rightly regarded as

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk horror ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Fo ...

or popular works that have no association with named artists. An exception are the

hanging scroll A hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit East Asian painting and calligraphy. They are different from handscrolls, which are narrower and designed to be viewed flat on a table. Hanging scrolls are generally i ...

s in the

Chion-in in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto, Japan is the headquarters of the Jōdo-shū (Pure Land Sect) founded by Hōnen (1133–1212), who proclaimed that sentient beings are reborn in Amida Buddha's Western Paradise (Pure Land) by reciting the ''nembutsu'' ...

collection in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

that bear seals designating the “Lotuses and Birds” compositions as done by a “Mr. Yu from Piling.” Mr. Yu is elsewhere identified as a Yu Ziming, active in the late 13th century. Yu was clearly a master of a local tradition of genre painting that specialized in plants, flowers, birds, insects and other genre subjects.

Manners

A manner of painting in this school of painting was the ''

mogu Mogu () is a painting skill or technique in traditional Chinese painting. It literally means "boneless". In these paintings, forms are made by ink and color washes rather than by outlines. Etymology There are mainly two derivatives: * ''Mogu-Hua' ...

'' (沒骨) or “boneless” style which eschewed clear outlines in ink for washes in color or monochrome ink itself.

Examples in exhibitions

The "Egrets and Lotuses" scrolls now in the

Tokyo National Museum The or TNM is an art museum in Ueno Park in the Taitō wards of Tokyo, ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the four museums operated by the , is considered the oldest national museum and the largest art museum in Japan. The museum collects, prese ...

are typical of works closer to the year 1300. They display a trend toward pattern and professional artisanship, away from the creativity that originally characterized the school. The "Birds and Lotuses" scroll reproduced with this article can be easily seen as another example of this period work with its exclusive ink wash and stylized positioning of the birds. The earlier scrolls in the Chion-in Monastery however are examples of works displaying a greater animation and with their use of color a greater sensuous appeal.

References

{{reflist *Yabe Yoshiaki, ''Yuan Underglaze Blue Porcelain'', in Toki daikei (A Collection of Ceramics), vol. 41, Tokyo, 1974, pp. 119–120. *Toda Tadasuke, ''Suiboku bijitsu daikei'' (A Collection of Monochrome Ink Paintings), vol. 3, p. 173. *''Song Paintings from Japanese Collections'', Museum Yamato Bunkakan, Nara, 1989, pp. 76–77. Art movements in Chinese painting Changzhou