Four Screens
Four screens of paintings are peculiar to Chinese painting. In a set of four vertical pieces of paintings at the same size, the artist paints the sense of beauty of the figures, landscapes, birds & flowers etc, based on his knowledge and understanding on the life and nature. The paintings come from the artists' accidental lyricism, heart of the realm of few desires and insipid pursuit of moderation.
For Chinese four screens landscape paintings, the most popular theme is four seasons(spring, summer, autumn and winter). Chinese painters often use different colors or different plants to portray different seasons. Other themes are also applied to four screens. Many Chinese artists stress landscape and figure to exist together, or landscape and pavilion, as they thought the figure and pavilion could make the whole painting "live". Sometimes the artist will paint the four screens just based on his inspiration, but not a regular theme. After all, a good series of Chinese screen paintings should be of natural and lively artistic conception.