Theory of Landscape Painting. The author talks about his experience in creating landscape paintings under the guise of meeting an old man among the Shigu Rocks in the Taihang Mountains. In fact, the author summarizes the experience in landscape painting creation from the Eastern Jin Dynasty to the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties. Throughout the article, a dialogue with the old man Shigu is used to clarify the theory of painting, with incisive arguments and thorough analysis. He put forward the "six essentials" of "qi, rhyme, thought, scenery, brushwork, and ink" as the creation principles and criticism standards of landscape paintings; put forward the view that "the similar has its shape and leaves its spirit; the true has both temperament"; from the perspective of evaluation standards and performance requirements, he proposed the "four qualities" of "spirit", "wonderful", "strange" and "qiao"; in terms of brush use, "tendon, flesh, The "four potentials" of "bones and qi"; point out the "two diseases" of painting into "tangible" and "invisible". He believes that "the images of mountains and rivers are related to each other's momentum", "to write about cloud and forest landscapes, one must understand the origin of the objects and images", "applying colors according to the genre has been capable since ancient times" and "water halo ink seals" emerged in the Tang Dynasty. According to the "Ancient Song Praise", it is said that pine trees "never wither, but they are pure pine trees", which shows the "gentleman's style". It is believed that Wu Daozi "has a pen but no ink" and Xiang Rong "has an ink but no pen". It is a relatively complete theoretical work on Chinese landscape painting.
