Ch: yuantihua. Lit. academy style painting. A type of Chinese painting associated with the Imperial Court Academy. Broadly speaking, the term may refer to the styles of each Imperial Court Academy beginning with that of the Tang dynasty and continuing through the Ming dynasty. More specifically, intaiga designates the Song Academy style, perpetuated as a classic mode by later Chinese and Japanese artists. Officially known as the Hanlin Tuhuayuan (Jp: Kanrin Togain 翰林図画院), the painting academy, gain 画院, functioned as a separate bureau within the Hanlin Academy (Ch: Hanlinyuan; Jp: Kanrin'in 翰林院), the group of scholars serving the court. Although the Hanlin Academy was established in 738 during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (Jp: *Gensō 玄宗, 685-762), the term gain first was used in the mid-9th-century work Ming Lidai minghua ji (Jp: Rekidai meigaki 歴代名画記) by Zhang Yanyuan (Jp: Chō Gen'en 張彦遠, 815?-after 874). Artisans had long been called to serve the government, but it is in the Tang period that an academy of painters was first utilized to provide decoration for the imperial court and government offices.
The two most famous and influential academies were the Northern Song painting academy under Emperor Huizong (Jp: Kisō 徽宗, 1082-1135) and the Southern Song painting academy under Emperor Gaozong (Jp: Kōsō 高宗, 1107-87). The Northern Song academy created a highly colored and naturalistic mode of rendering bird-and-flower subjects intai kachōga 院体花鳥画. The Southern Song academy style, dominated by the Li Tang (Jp: Ri Tō 李唐, act. early 12th century) which influenced the landscapes of Ma Yuan (Jp: Ba En 馬遠, act. late 12th-early 13th century) and Xia Gui (Jp: Ka Kei 夏珪, act. 1194-1224), became a dominant force within Chinese and Japanese landscape painting. The academy style of landscape painting intai sansuiga 院体山水画 features asymmetrical or one-corner compositions *henkaku no kei 辺角の景, emphasis on the void, thick, angular outlines, and axe-cut texture strokes *fuhekishun 斧劈皴. In China, the academy style, nearly extinct during the Yuan dynasty, was revitalized by the so-called Ming academy painters associated with the Zhe school, Seppa 浙派.
Intaiga first entered Japan through imported Song paintings including: Autumn and Winter Landscapes, Shūtō sansui zu 秋冬山水図 attributed to Emperor Huizong, in Konchiin 金地院, Kyoto; Landscapes, Sansui zu 山水図 attributed to Li Tang, Kōtōin 高桐院, Kyoto; Oxen, Shūya bokugyū zu 秋野牧牛図 attributed to Yan Ciping (Jp: En Jihei 閻次平, act. late 12th century), Sen'oku Hakkokan 泉屋博古館, Kyoto; Ox and Herdboys, Sekichū kiboku zu 雪中帰牧図 by Li Di (Jp: Ri Teki 李迪, act. late 12th century), Yamato Bunkakan 大和文華館, Nara; Snow Landscape, Sekkei sansui zu 雪景山水図 attributed to Liang Kai (Jp: Ryō Kai 梁楷, act. early 13th century), Tokyo National Museum; and numerous paintings attributed to Ma Yuan and Xia Gui. These works and others served as models for much early Muromachi landscape painting, in particular the Shōkokuji 相国寺 style associated with Shūbun 周文 (act. 15th century). A second wave of academy style painting entered Japan with the Zhe school and influenced the landscapes of Sesshū 雪舟 (1420-1501). The academy mode also formed the basis of the Kano style (see *Kano-ha 狩野派) which dominated Japanese landscape painting of the 16th-17th centuries.