Abstract

Fan K'uan , like other figures in the history of Chinese art, has come to stand for a manner of painting. But neither internal nor external documentation supports the most visually compelling painting among those associated with Fan--the grand, signed landscape scroll, Travelling Among Streams and Mountains in the National Palace Museum --as genuine. The earliest seal on Travelling is a 14th century Imperial Collection inventory seal. Eleventh and twelfth century commentary suggests the painting is genuine, but falls short of documenting it. There is no secure external documentation until the 17th century. ;Travelling Among Streams and Mountains is affirmed in this thesis as genuine, but the methodology sustaining this conclusion is examined. A logic can sometimes be seen in changing perceptions of Fan's art, but art history has no application as a deductive method, and no authority from the sciences as a sensitive dating tool. As an inductive system, it is weakened by the few examples on which it rests. Various methodologies are examined in Chapter One. ;In Chapter Two, it is argued that Fan K'uan, as a creature of history, is a persona colored by the demands of Chinese historical didacticism. ;In Chapter Three, early criticism is analyzed to formulate aesthetic, technical and philosophical terms in which Fan was judged, nearest his time, to have set a standard. ;In Chapter Four, eleven distinctive extant paintings attributed to or in some way related to Fan K'uan are documented and described in catalogue format. An iconography for the Travelling scroll is proposed according to terms of Sung models of regeneration, authority, and state order. ;From the separate histories traced by written record and extant paintings, contours of the tradition emerge. Persistent features and distinctive temporal and geographical lineages are identified. Beads of the tradition are strung together in Chapter Five. This narrative addresses the tradition as an impulse for homage, copying, and invention based on the cultural values and artistic techniques it embodies