Landscape with Migrating Geese in the style of Mi Fu and Shen Chou

Zhang Yin was a painter of the middle Qing dynasty, originally from Dantu (in modern-day Zhejiang province). His great-grandfather had sold fabric from a street stall, but by Zhang Yin’s grandfather’s time, the family fortune had grown to include a fabric store, a business they continued to operate well into his father’s generation. The continued accumulation of wealth over several generations allowed his father to collect paintings and calligraphies. Zhang Yin used his family collection for studying, and he traveled to the Hangzhou-Jingling (Nanjing) area to sketch from nature. In 1791 his father passed away, and the family business was inherited by a cousin, who then severed connections to the artist. Hardship followed Zhang Yin thereafter, so he naturally turned from amateur painter to professional to support himself. As a professional painter, he became best known for his shanshui hua. In addition to paintings modeled after ancient styles, Zhang Yin was known for having sketched in plein air fashion directly from nature, and creating zhenjing hua (“true scene paintings”). Distant Hills and Migrating Geese shows a combination two traditions. Viewers enter the painting from the lower right and cross over a small path and bridge to the other shore. In traditional Chinese handscrolls, one would proceed farther to the left in the direction of the scroll, but Zhang Yin painted a series of hills in the distance that appear to double back toward the right as they recede into space, thus using the perspective of Western-style landscape compositions, but his brushwork derives from Mi Fu and Mi Youren of the Song dynasty.