The Art of Chinese Painting: A Study on the Color Contrast between Zhang Daqian's Early and Later Landscape Painting Styles

Abstract

Zhang Daqian, one of the most important and influential Chinese painters of the 20th century.He is renowned for his rich thematic content and exquisite techniques that incorporate Western painting theories and skills. This paper conducts a quantitative comparative study on the colors of Zhang Daqian's early and late landscape paintings at three levels. Initially, through color histograms and color moment analysis, the study examines the color composition and distribution in landscape paintings; Secondly, it investigates the visual complexity of colors in early and late works based on the three fundamental elements of color: hue, saturation, and brightness, analyzing the different visual effects and emotional expressions of early and late paintings; Lastly, through color correlation analysis, the paper delves into the color relationships in early and late works, revealing different color styles due to the varied associations of color usage in these periods. By extracting and comparing data features of early and late landscape paintings, alongside a professional comparative analysis and argumentation incorporating Zhang's artistic career and related indices, the paper presents quantitative analysis results comparing early and late landscape paintings: (1) Early works exhibit characteristics of high brightness, low contrast, low saturation, and negative skewness, with a diverse combination of colors and low concentration. (2) Late works are characterized by low brightness, high contrast, high saturation, and a skewness close to zero, with color distribution that is both symmetrical and balanced, mainly integrating Eastern and Western painting techniques to depict a transcendent, harmoniously unified natural world.

Keywords: Landscape Paintings, Color histograms, Visual complexity, Color co-occurrence matrix