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Landscape

Huang Yue

Artwork Details

Landscape
1831
Huang Yue
ink on paper
22 1/8 x 12 3/8 in. (56.2 x 31.43 cm);6 7/8 x 9 13/16 in. (17.46 x 24.92 cm);24 x 16 in. (60.96 x 40.64 cm)
Gift of Ellen and Richard Laing
2006/2.22.3

Description

Gallery Rotation Summer 2013
Huang Yue
China, 1750–1841
Landscape
Qing dynasty (1644–1912)
1831
Album leaf, ink on paper
Gift of Ellen and Richard Laing,
2006/2.22.3
This elegant painting of an idyllic retreat comes from an album
of four landscape paintings (another is adjacent). The light use of
ink and the simple quick strokes used to depict the mountains
and rocks demonstrate well the “emptiness and nimbleness” of
landscape, a misty and dreamlike quality that Huang Yue advocated
in his art criticism. As an artist in the literati (amateur scholarartist)
tradition, he believed it was more important for a painting
to express the artist’s character than to offer a faithful depiction
of nature. Here the use of disproportionate scale, multiple
perspectives pays homage to a tradition that may be traced back to
an earlier literati forbear, the painter Dong Qichang (1555–1636).

Subject Matter:

The light use of ink and the simple quick strokes used to depict the mountains and rocks demonstrate well the “emptiness and nimbleness” of landscape, a misty and dreamlike quality that Huang Yue advocated in his art criticism. As an artist in the literati (amateur scholar-artist) tradition, he believed it was more important for a painting to express the artist’s character than to offer a faithful depiction of nature. Here the use of disproportionate scale, multiple perspectives pays homage to a tradition that may be traced back to an earlier literati forbear, the painter Dong Qichang.

Physical Description:

This elegant painting of an idyllic retreat comes from an album of four landscape paintings (another is adjacent).

Usage Rights:

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