Winter Landscape

This exquisite fan represents a type popular in the fourteenth century. The depicted image reflects a common method applied to the landscape painting of the Northern Song, which can lead viewers both into the painting and the meandering journey through the scenery. It was created in the so-called Li-Guo style, based on paintings of the early masters of landscape Li Cheng (919–967) and Guo Xi (ca. 1001–1090). The unidentified artist must have been aware of Li Cheng’s famed “crab claw” branches, characteristic of the wintry forest style, and was able to utilize the brush idiom of Guo Xi in creating rock formations, coupled with light ink to reveal a lonely wood gatherer traveling in a snowy scene. (“Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation in East Asian Art,” curated by Cornell PhD student Yuhua Ding under the supervision of Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum January 23-June 12, 2016)