Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c11.s4.t3.22

v2.c11.s4.t3.22

and palaces in Chang’an (now Xi’an), Luoyang, and other places. Zhu Jingxuan of the Tang Dynasty commented in his ‘*Records of Famous Paintings in the Tang Dynasty*’, “All the figures, Buddha, ghosts, animals, landscape, palaces and temples, trees and grass that he painted are the top of the world, the first of the whole country.” Wu Daozi was especially good at painting the Buddhist and Taoist figures, and imitating Zhang Sengyou, painter of Liang of the Southern Dynasties, known as “successor of Zhang Sengyou”, and was called the representative person of the “sparse style” together with Zhang Sengyou. Wu Daozi founded the “Wu’s Style” of Buddhist and Taoist character patterns, with upright strokes, clear-cut and concise. The clothes lines are like orchid leaves or water shield branches, the shape is round while the clothes are floating up, with the feeling of “heavenly clothes flying, and the whole wall floating,” which is called “Wu’s belt against the wind.” The colour set is also innovative, often with dark ink depicting the lines, slightly shaded with light colour, which is known as “Wu’s dressing”, or “light crimson”. Dong You of the Northern Song Dynasty said in Volume Six of ‘*Postscript to Paintings of Guangchuan*’, “Wu’s paintings of figures are like sculptures, when watched from all sides, convey what is to be known from any angles. His strokes are rounded and thin like winding copper wires. The thinness and thickness of red powder shows the high and low of the bones, and the flesh shows up from the depressed place.” It seems that Wu Daozi was also familiar with the “like winding iron wires” iron line depicting of Yuchi Yisheng, Khotan painter of the Western Regions, and no stranger to the “like sculpture” concave-convex method of Indian technique. Xia Wenyan of the Yuan Dynasty said about Wu Daozi’s paintings in ‘*Appreciation of Paintings and Illustrations*’ that, “The characters have eight facets, lively and alive. The colouring, with slight shading in dark ink lines, naturally goes beyond plain cloth, which is called Wu’s dressing.” This colouring method of showing stereoscopic sensation is probably to a transformation of Indian technique. The ‘*Drawing of Birth of Sakya*’, which is said to be the work of Wu Daozi, might be the copy by the Song people, in which the modelling and clothes of the Buddhist figures are the clothes, hats, noble helmets of the Tang Dynasty, and Indian style is nowhere to be seen; the line drawing is not coloured, from which one cannot find any trace of Indian technique.