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Chinese Mogu Painting

Mogu is also called Boneless Painting, in other words, it is a kingd of paintings without the outline of lines with Chinese ink, but with forms achieved by washes of ink and color.

The name of Mogu first appeared in a book by Guo Ruo Xu in Song Dynasty (960 A.D.-1127   A.D.).

Instead of using ink lines, Mogu Painting uses colors or colored lines and color gradation to create a painting.
Mogu Painting was created by Zhang Zengyao during the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420 A.D.-589   A.D.).

In the Five Dynasties period (907 A.D.-960   A.D.), Huang Quan significantly developed it to paint trees and flowers.
In Tang Dynasty (618 A.D.-907   A.D.), Yang Sheng mastered and developed it.

In Ming Dynasty (1368 A.D.-1644   A.D.), Xu Wei further developed it and started applying this technique in Landscape Paintings.

In Qing Dynasty (1616 A.D-1911   A.D.), Yun Shouping (Yun Nantian) made it famous and Ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo developed it further.

Mogu Painting has only been a small stream in Chinese painting history since it was created, so there have not been many famous Mogu Paintings passed down.
I started to learn Mogu Painting in China Central Academy of Fine Arts.

According to my instructor:

Chinese Mogu Painting is a painting style that uses the methods of Chinese Xieyi, to achieve the results of Chinese Gongbi Painting. Therefore, it is somewhere between Chinese Gongbi and Chinese Xieyi.
Moguin Chinese meansthere is no skeleton. Since ink lines are the bones of Chinese painting, if there is no bone, then it means artists do not paint Mogu Painting with ink lines, but create a painting directly with colors or colored lines.
Instead of using Chinese ink, Chinese Mogu Painting uses the colors directly.

Here are some of my Chinese Mogu paintings that also my assignements in Chinese National Academy of Arts and China Central Academy of Fine Arts and hope you enjoy them and be some help with you to learn Chinese art and culture: