CHU-JAN

flourished 10th century Pinyin Juran Chinese painter of the Five Dynasties (907-960) period and one of the most innovative of artists in the pure landscape tradition. Little is known of Ch-jan other than that he was a Buddhist priest (Ch-jan is a priestly name-his family name is not known) and that he worked for the court of the southern T'ang in what is now Nanking. He was supposedly a follower of Tung Yan, a similarly little-known painter of the Five Dynasties in the court at Nanking. No certain authentic works survive, but those considered to be in his style and in that of his teacher Tung Yan make use of easy fibrous brushstrokes, wet ink washes, and rounded contours, which are evocative of the landscape of southeast China. The two artists became increasingly revered in later ages by critics who saw in their softly evocative paintings the paradigm of the attitude that would characterize the literary man (wen-jen).