From the perspective of the development history of Chinese landscape painting, green landscape is the first mature form of expression, and is generally considered to be a form of painting that requires meticulous work. This feature is reflected in the rational layout of painters, detailed performance, or rigorous and hierarchical coloring. Although green landscape and ink landscape express nature in different techniques, in the process of development, we can see that the two are more and more closely linked, and green landscape painting has more and more freehand attributes in artistic conception, lines, coloring and other aspects.

The early green landscape existed in the background of religious murals, and became the background of character themes in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, such as the "Luoshen Fu Tujuan", which gradually formed the early style of meticulous green landscape. With the development of green landscape painting by Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao in the Tang Dynasty, the performance of green landscape painting became more and more mature. They were good at using stone green and stone green to describe the beauty of mountains and rivers and the mountains and rivers in spring and summer, and made the landscape painting neat, delicate and magnificent through the expression of color language.

In the Five Dynasties, the expressive language of green landscape painting was further enriched, which was directly related to the development of ink and wash landscape at that time. The expansion of brushwork techniques and the emergence of texturing techniques enhanced the expressiveness of green landscape outside of color, presenting a situation of parallel development of fine brushwork and freehand brushwork. In fact, it began from this period, The freehand brushwork of ink and wash landscape and the freehand brushwork of green landscape began to exchange and develop, learn from each other, and promote their own continuous change.

The green landscape of the Tang Dynasty tended to the real landscape as much as possible, and the goal of true reproduction was achieved through careful depiction. The image of the mountain and stone spring forest was often first sketched with ink lines, and then the ocher was used as the background color. The blue and green stones were carefully colored and superimposed layer by layer. In this complex process, painters need to have a strong control over the picture. Since Li Zhaodao, the green landscape painting has begun to absorb the elements of ink and wash, making the lines that originally lacked changes flexible and vivid.

In the Song Dynasty, the difference between the green landscape and the freehand brushwork landscape was very clear. There were many painters specializing in the creation of green landscape. Most of them represented a style of royal wealth and splendor. The green landscape developed in its own system. The mountain and water art of Wang Ximeng, Zhao Boju, and Zhao Bosu was an exploration under the palace art environment. Later, due to the rise of ink painting, With calligraphy in painting, the green landscape has gradually become a small freehand form due to its influence, which obviously adds the flavor of using pen and ink to the texturing and dyeing of rocks and the performance of trees.

Green landscape painting has also been divided. On the one hand, it inherits the techniques of green landscape painting in the Tang Dynasty, which is meticulous and meticulous, and has the flavor of royal wealth; The other is based on the freehand brushwork of mountains and rivers, dyed with stone green and stone green. This clear distinction is most obvious in Qian Xuan's and Zhao Mengfu's paintings. They are not specialized green landscape painters, but they creatively integrate the writing and literati's aesthetic consciousness into green landscape. They are gentle, dignified, primitive and beautiful, and their line performance clearly traces back to the Tang Dynasty. His "Mountain Dwelling Scroll" effectively uses the form of "retro" to purify, idealize and perpetuate the natural mountains and rivers, so as to express personal feelings or ideas. Qian Xuan's colored landscape seems to be more in line with the social aesthetic taste at that time, and also more in line with the psychological setting of the literati, laying the foundation for the development of green landscape painting in the Ming Dynasty.

As the requirements for expressiveness such as lines and texturing became higher and higher, the painting of the Ming Dynasty gained new development on the basis of inheriting the traditions of previous generations. The green landscape also found itself in the increasingly dense composition and modeling of the ink landscape. Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming both tried green landscape, which became one of their many painting features. The specialized green landscape painter was Qiu Ying, He is committed to restoring the tradition of "Big Green". His pen and color are exquisite, beautiful and elegant. Yuan Jiang and Yuan Yao of the Qing Dynasty followed Qiu Ying. The landscape was meticulous, neat and unique, no longer relying solely on the independent expressive force of color, but relying on the depth of the texturing method to express the artistic conception and flavor of the whole picture. The thick green reflects the exquisite texturing method. Obviously, the green landscape painting absorbs more abundant strokes and ink techniques of the ink landscape. Among the literati painters such as the "Four Kings" and the "Four Monks", there are also green landscape paintings. The brushwork is clumsy and mellow, astringent but not sluggish. The brushwork is more vigorous and resilient, and the texture is like a cone like chisel. Here, the expression of meaning is higher than the appearance of things. It is no longer a realistic landscape that stresses the interest of things and reason, but also the internal expression of different situations of the painter. And the painter's conception of the overall artistic conception is more subjective, so as to express special feelings, which can be said to be the freehand expression of green landscape painting.

From "Research on Chinese Green Landscape Art", written by Song Li. Shandong Fine Arts Publishing House, May 2018

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