Bird and flower painting

Bird-and-flower painting is a kind of Chinese painting named after its subject matter. Normally, most bird-and-flower paintings belong to the scholar-artist style of Chinese painting.

According to Chinese tradition, bird-and-flower painting covers "flowers, birds, fish, and insects" (Traditional Chinese: 花鳥魚蟲, Simplified Chinese: 花鸟鱼虫 huā, niǎo, yú, chóng). It can thus deal with a wide range of natural topics, including flowers (plants), fish, insects, birds, pets (dogs, cats) etc.

The huaniao hua (花鳥畫) or "bird-and-flower painting" is proper of 10th century China. The most representative artists are Huang Quan 哳㥳 (ca. 900  – 965) and Xu Xi 徐熙 (937–975). They are the masters of two schools: the first school was led by Huang Quan (imperial painter). It is characterised by an “outline” method of brush work, with emphasis on bright colours filling a meticulously outline (gongbi). The other school was led by Xu Xi (never entered into officialdom) and typically used techniques associated with ink-and-wash painting.