The Under-Current of Tang Pictures

Abstract

We see one of the most characteristic aspects of chinese painting in the socalled pai-hua (white drawing). Pai-hua is not a rough sketch or a design serving as a preparation for finishment by colour, but a complete line-drawing itself. It has been said that pai-hua appeared at the end of Later Han dynasty and grew in the Six dynasty era and that it was completed by Wu Taohsuan in Tang era. But it is impossible to identify pai-hua in Tang with that in Six dynasty as a classical sort of pai-hua. I want to indicate this delicate difference both by literary evidences in Tang and Sung era such as "Li-tai ming-hua-chi" etc., and by investigating the technique of a wall-painting in Tang era.