Free Like A Fishman:the Research On The Along The River During Winter’s First Snow By Chao Kan

As the early Chinese landscape paintings are very little, the Along the River during Winter’s First Snow by Chao Kan with no doubt about its age, is a special landscape painting of Nan-tang dynasty. In painting buildings, monasteries, boats, riverside hamlets, fishing villages, plants and bamboo expressed the scenery of Kiang Nan, and the tourists and fishermen in painting plays a significant role for researching the landscape paintings, especially the style of Nan-tang paintings. However, the Along the River during Winter’s First Snow is lost the value of itself, because it is always used as the material for studying Dong Yuan. In this thesis, there are mainly four sections to analyze this painting. In section one, the basic topics such as the work time, comments and seals of collectors and the artistic value are discussed. In the second section, the interpretation of tourists and fishermen in painting are presented, and the creation themes are also talked about on the foundation of previous literatures. In section three, we focus on the landscape of the painting, combining with the description of snow and water, to show the aesthetic significance. In the last section, the discussions of reclusion theme in this painting are expended to the imperial painting of Nan-tang, even the art history of Chinese and try to show the development of this style in Chinese landscape paintings. Summary, this thesis with the subject of Along the River during Winter’s First Snow, consults the background of relational network of Chao Kan to clear the basic problems of this painting and reveal the reclusion theme in the paintings of Nan-tang.