Landscape after Zhao Mengfu

Wang Jian, artist

1598–1677

Landscape after Zhao Mengfu, 1662, Qing dynasty (1644–1911)

Where object was made: China

Material/technique: ink; color; silk

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 30.5 x 395.7 cm including poem
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 12 x 155 13/16 in
Mount Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 31.5 x 1051.3 cm
Mount Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 12 3/8 x 413 7/8 in

Credit line: Museum purchase

Accession number: 1967.0001

Not on display

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Label texts

Archive Label 2003:
Wang Jian was one of a group of seventeenth-century artists whose approach to painting was guided by the great scholar-connoisseur-painter-calligrapher Dong Qichang (1555-1636). By the latter part of the century, these artist's works had been accepted by the emperor and his court as the mainstream of Chinese painting, and they thus came to be known as the Orthodox School.
Orthodox artists looked almost exclusively to the work of past masters for their inspiration. Here, Wang Jian's long inscription at the end of the handscroll warmly praises two paintings by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1332)-which he had been able to study-and expresses his desire to work in the same style. Though he humbly notes his own inability to attain the quality of Zhao's paintings, his reference to Zhao as his model establishes him as a part of the gentleman scholar tradition extending back to the early great ages of Chinese painting.