Chinese gardens are wonderful!

Have you seen Monty Don exploring a Chinese garden ? I  love his bewilderment at the rocks in the Suzhou gardens.  The landscape painter at minute 16 is a friend of Kaili Fu.

Not all Chinese gardens are in China!
A new Chinese Garden at RHS Bridgewater.  The pavilions represent the Four Arts.  Background to the garden.
Creating the Ming-style courtyard garden in the Metropolitan Museum.
The Huntingdon, LA, has a podcast series “Unscholarly” Gardens: Rethinking the Gardens of China

The “Secret garden” room in the Forbidden City is  not  a literal garden.
Garden scenes – plum blossom by Wang Shishen.
Peony history

A little more on gardens.

Chinese gardens and Tolkien!?

All events of the CBPS AGM will be held by Zoom.  All events are free to CBPS members.

Saturday 7 November 11am – 12.30pm: AGM and Open Forum discussion.  Including:

• Vote to elect  Committee Members
• Vote on Resolution: Remove Trustees from CBPS Constitution
  • Background:
    • The role of trustee was defined in the CBPS Constitution to hold property owned by the Society, for example projector equipment.  The Society currently has no equipment and no intention to acquire it as we no longer hold in-person meetings.
      • The Society currently owns two pull-up banners, held by Angela Reich and Paul Maslowski.  These do not necessitate the role of trustee.
      • The Committee is therefore putting a resolution to the AGM to remove all reference to trustees from the Constitution.
      • Currrent Constitution (2015)
    • Resolution: To change the CBPS Constitution to remove all reference to Trustees.

Saturday 7 November 2pm – 3.30pm: talk by William Beswick, Christensen  Fellow in Chinese Painting
the Ashmolean Museum – Painting Differences: National Identity and Chinese Painting

• In the 19th and early 20th century, with the introduction of oil painting and other Western approaches to pictorial representation, ink brush painting began to be reimagined for the first time as a national painting tradition. Indeed, the very idea of a ‘nation’ was new to China at this time. Previously, China was an ethnically diverse empire representing the power of an emperor; as a nation, it had to be reimagined as a state which represented a single people (nation). Who were the people, and what was the relationship of ethnic diversity to national identity? This talk will consider how these questions were asked, answered, and asked again in Chinese painting throughout the 20th century. It will focus on works from the Ashmolean’s collection, but also draw on works from further afield, to show how the idea of a ‘nation’ was central to modern artistic innovation.

Sunday 8 November 2-3.30pm: painting demonstration

• Watch or paint along as CBPS Member teacher KC Chan demonstrates plum blossom and birds.

Invitations to these events will be sent by email to members.  No booking required.

Gold and green landscape, with video

Shitao’s Returning Home, and video explanation

Music. The first piece is called High Mountain Flowing Water, very suitable for viewing landscape painting

Farewell by a Stream on a Clear Day by Zhao Yuan, with audio description of the painting

Photographs of Chinese mountains, and more photos

Mountain Madness

5 best Chinese paintings? It includes a Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. You might have other ideas of the best – do let us know!

Gold trees

Ren Xiong – Ten Thousand paintings – don’t panic, there are only ten!

Zhang Daqian emulating Wang Ximeng‘s Blue-green landscape

Alternative to mountains – heavenly pits!

CBP Learning:

• NEW weekend course Insects and Related Flowers with Qu Leilei at Missenden School of Creative Arts in Cookham, Berkshire
• NEW Free online talks from the China Institute of America: Living with Ease and Harmony
• Ink Different Studio
  • Online courses
  • 2027 Cultural Journey to Yellow Mountains April 2027
• Japanese calligraphy in Aldershot, Ardinton and Olympia
• Book by Craig Clunas: Sons of Heaven
• NEW Prof Shane McCausland on the importance of Chinese Painting – shame he didn’t mention CBPS!
• CBPS Member Sylvia’s video on model sketching, used to introduce sumi-e for her students
• See teacher list & courses, & online courses

CBP Looking:

• NEW Exhibition by CBPS Member artist Kaili Fu at Kennaway House, Sidmouth, 15 – 21 September 2026, and silk painting workshop 18 September
• NEW Korea at the British Museum 01 October 2026 – 31 January 2027.  Korean art has strong connections with Chinese art.
• NEW Ashmolean, Oxford, Sisters, Brothers, Others
  Nationality And 20th-Century Chinese Art, 11 Jul 2026 to 7 Mar 2027.
• Chinese artist He Weimin has illustrated  Brideshead Revisited !
• Ben Fogle’s Chinese Adventure on Channel 5 and BBC.  Trailer.
• London V&A Contemporary Japanese Lacquer to April 2027
• Whitworth Gallery Manchester Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige 14 March – 15 November 2026.  Interesting review on their innovations
• Asian Art in London 29 Oct – 10 November
• Metropolitan Museum (New York): 17C Nanjing and Decorative Arts in China
• From CBPS member Peng :
  • • Here are some demos from an incredibly talented young artist — Guo Bingduan (郭丙端). The standard has been going up all the time, but he is on a different level.
      https://www.instagram.com/chinesepainting_bingduan/
      https://www.youtube.com/@Bingduan_ChinesePainting
    • And some detailed tutorials by Qin Shaofu (秦少甫) on canna
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_mNLggN8Oo
      on gourd
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtLqgdcM05w
      and on sunflower
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFscdmlZ3-M

  Note: when accessing any links given, take notice of warnings from your virus-checking/ security programme as CBPS cannot take any responsibility for problems with web addresses given in good faith.

The CBPS AGM and demonstrations will be held by Zoom.  All events are free to CBPS members.

Saturday 1 November 11am – 12.30pm UK time: AGM

Saturday 1 November 2pm – 3.30pm UK time: painting demonstration by Shuhua Jin
Watch or paint along as Shuhua paints Xugu’s Three Friends of Winter with Squirrels.
He will paint the central section only (image below): paper 35cm x 70-80cm, single unsized Xuan.  If you want to do the whole painting you will need longer paper (at least 210 cm long, 35cm wide).
You will need ink and these colours: indigo, yellow ochre and cinnabar.
Brushes: a small fine tip brush, a medium size goat hair brush and a harder hair, eg wolf or mixed hair (goat with rabbit or horse hair).
This is Xugu’s work, featuring the classic traditional scholar theme called Three Gentlemen of The Winter (soul friendship) – Plum blossom, Pine tree and Bamboo.  Obviously it is dominant by the three squirrels which is always the favourite subject for the artist.
This image shows the centre part of the hand scroll painting.  Painter used free view of the perspective, allowing the objects scattered around, the central point is emphasised by the three squirrels facing to the direction. In terms of composition, amazingly using the branches of the plum blossom tree to bridge all in the manner of classic diagonal composition.
Essentially, the dry and wet brush strokes apply to many areas in the painting.  The fine brush lines and side point brush strokes which  reflected of Xugu’s unique style.  The combination of the dry brush strokes and gentle wet washes gives the phenomenon atmosphere.

Sunday 2 November 10 am UK time: painting demonstration LIVE FROM CHINA
Watch or paint along as Mr Lv Xiaoshu of the Chinese Association of Artists demonstrates his individual style of landscape painting

An ancient colour recreated  (zoom/scroll in to get to the text).  In the video I love the combination of the modern lab with the mortar and pestle.

We should have respect for our xuan paper!

Love these small books

An English Poem !  Is it really about Chinese art?  Commentary.  Another poem by Elizabeth Jennings.

Recreations of traditional works in nails.  Why not?

Painting on toilet paper !  Probably more absorbent than xuan. Apparently these are characters from a video game.

Daoist whistling is a thing.  A learned paper on the subject.  And another.  Pottery whistles.

Our recent Newsletters have featured mystery objects associated with Chinese art and culture.  Check out the CBPS Newsletters for the secrets!

Mystery Object 8, October 2025

Bought at an online auction. It is 5.5” (14 cm) tall, 4” (10 cm) in diameter and made of bone, beautifully inscribed with the 8 Immortals and elaborate brass fittings. It has 2 handles.  There is an inner container similarly made from bone and brass with 2 handles and this is 3.5” (9.5 cm) tall and 2” (5cm) in diameter again finely carved with dragons. There is also a separate piece that looks like a spout but doesn’t seem to fit. It appears that a lid is missing. There are inscribed characters on the base but they do not look Chinese so could it be Korean?  What is it? How does it function? Does anyone know anything about such an object?

Mystery Object 7, July 2025

Mystery Object 6, April 2025

Mystery Object 5, January 2025

Mystery Object 4, October 2024

Mystery Object 3, July 2024

Mystery Object 2, April 2024

Mystery Object 1, January 2024