FOUR MASTERS OF THE YAN DYNASTY

Chinese painters who worked during the Yan period (12061368) and were revered in the Ming dynasty and later as major exponents of the tradition of literati painting (/a>wen-jen-hua; ), which was concerned more with individual expression and learning than with outward representation and immediate visual appeal. Two of the Four Masters were Huang Kung-wang and Wu Chen (qq.v.), who, being of the earlier generation of artists in the Yan, more consciously emulated the work of ancient masters, especially those pioneering artists of the Five Dynasties period such as Tung Yan and Ch-jan (q.v.), who rendered landscape in a broad, almost Impressionistic manner, with coarse brushstrokes and wet ink washes. While these painters were also revered by the two younger Yan masters, the restrained thinness of Ni Tsan (q.v.) and the almost embroidered richness of Wang Meng (q.v.) could not be more different from the work of the older Yan masters. Thus, with the Four Masters, all of whom were noted for their lofty personal and aesthetic ideals, the art of landscape painting shifted from an emphasis on close representation of nature to a personal expression of nature's qualities, with a new attention to the vocabulary of brush manipulation.