CHING HAO

flourished 910, -950, Ch'in-shui, Honan province, China Pinyin Jing Hao, also called Hung-ku-tzu important landscape painter and essayist of the Five Dynasties (907-960) period. In his art Ching Hao followed the court painters of the T'ang dynasty (618-907) in emphasizing the singular grandeur of the landscape. He spent much of his life in retirement as a farmer in the T'ai-hang Mountains of Shansi province. Not even reliable copies of his work survive, but he is considered to have been one of the precursors of the school of monumental landscape painting that came to maturity in the Northern Sung period. An essay attributed to him, Pi-fa chi ("Record of Brush Methods"), sets out the aims, ideals, and methods of the classical landscape painter at one with nature. It had considerable influence on the aesthetics of landscape painting in the Sung dynasty and later. Ching Hao's Northern landscape style, which used bold compositions and crisply drawn lines to depict precipitous mountain crags, contrasted with the softer and more atmospheric effects favoured by artists in southern China. Ching Hao is said to have been the teacher of Kuan T'ung, who was in turn followed by another famous master, Li Ch'eng. But for all three artists there is little certain information, and few paintings are definitely attributable to them.