Title: Chinese painting - Characteristics of painting | Britannica
Headings: Characteristics of painting
Characteristics of painting
From the Shang dynasty to 220 ce
Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce)

Content: The first Zhou rulers virtually took over the Shang culture; indeed, the earliest bronze vessels bearing Zhou inscriptions might, from their style, have been made in the Shang dynasty. The Zhou kings parceled out their expanding territory among feudal lords, each of whom was free to make ritual objects for his own court use. As the feudal states rose in power and independence, so did the central Zhou itself shrink, to be further weakened by the eastward shift of the capital from sites in the Wei River valley near modern-day Xi’an to Luoyang in 771 bce. Thereafter, as the Zhou empire was broken up among rival states, many local styles in the arts developed. The last three centuries of the Zhou dynasty, known as the Warring States period (475–221 bce ), saw a flowering of the arts in many areas. The breakdown of the feudal hegemony, the growth of trade between the states, and the rise of a rich landowning and merchant class all brought into existence new patrons and new attitudes that had a great influence on the arts and crafts. Practically nothing survives of Zhou painting, although from literary evidence it seems that the art developed considerably, particularly during the period of the Warring States. Palaces and ancestral halls were decorated with wall paintings. Late Zhou texts tell of a craftsman working for the Zhougong (duke of Zhou) who covered the stock of a whip with minute paintings of dragons, snakes, horses, chariots, and “all the ten thousand things” and of another painter who told the king of Qi that spirits and ghosts were easier to draw than dogs and horses, whose precise appearance is known to all.