New research on bamboo paintings found in the Dunhuang grottoes in
northwest China's
Gansu
Province shows the art form may be dated back to the fifth
century.
In
the past, bamboo painting was thought to have appeared no earlier
than the Tang Dynasty (618 AD - 907 AD), when some renowned
painters, poets and emperors painted bamboo images with black inks,
said Professor Yang Xiong, of the Dunhuang Research Academy.
However, research on the Dunhuang paintings showed that many of the
bamboo paintings found were painted long before that period, said
Yang.
"Judging from the painting styles of the bamboo at Dunhuang, we can
find some of the paintings are by painters as late as the Yuan
Dynasty (1271 AD - 1368 AD) and some as early as the Northern Wei
(386 AD - 534 AD)," he said.
In
the 1970s, archeologists found images of bamboo in a fresco
featuring a servant girl and bamboo in a Tang prince's tomb and
declared it to be the earliest bamboo painting.
The work now identified as the earliest was found at the No.254
cave and is considered a masterpiece and valuable material for the
study of China's bamboo painting history.
The paintings at Dunhuang were the earliest and best preserved
found so far and of high artistic and research value, said
Yang.
(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2003)