The Pleasure of Remote Isles: The Ideal of Seclusion in the Tang Dynasty Landscape Painting as Recorded in Tang Poetry

Landscape painting emerged during the Tang dynasty and gradually became the most quintessential form of traditional Chinese painting. However, due to the scarcity of surviving works by early masters and the evolving nature of the concept itself, the precise themes, forms, styles and meanings of Tang landscape painting remain challenging to define. DU Fu's long poem "In Praise of the New Landscape Screen Painted by Liu, the Minor Magistrate of Fengxian" offers a potential solution to this problem. The article suggests that the "picture of Chi County" depicted in the poem actually represents the landscape of Fengxian. It argues that officials transcended reality by imbuing depictions of actual landscapes with the aesthetic appeal of remote isles, despite residing in prefectures and counties. This form of projection is an early expression of the ideal life of seclusion in Tang dynasty landscape painting. Furthermore, the "pleasure of remote isles" in DU Fu's poetry is not an isolated phenomenon. Similar poetic and literary works reveal that creations of this nature were relatively widespread among literati residing in provincial offices during the Middle and Late Tang periods. These works can be viewed as a collective spiritual landscape, offering literati a means of achieving equilibrium amid the dual tensions of officialdom and seclusion. Tracking the possible forms and ideas of landscape painting through poetry and prose is an effective way to research the history of painting during this period. This approach also reveals that, poetry and painting were not entirely separate domains, but shared a mutual spiritual world for intellectuals. Interactive studies of poetry and painting offer a fresh perspective on the artistic and literary landscape of the time.