Mountain Landscape after Hongren

Description

Zhang Daqian
China, ca. 1899–1983
Mountain Landscape after Hongren
1935
Hanging scroll, ink and light color on paper
Gift of the Marvin Felheim Collection, 1955/2.13

Zhang Daqian, a versatile artist and flamboyant personality, was
one of the most renowned Chinese artists of the twentieth century,
adept at calligraphy, painting, and poetry. His painting style
combines the techniques of Western art and traditional Chinese
painting.

Zhang was a collector of paintings by past masters, from which
he learned a wide range of styles. This work features the austere
landscape style of the seventeenth-century painter Hongren. By
paying tribute to Hongren, Zhang places himself within the great
historical tradition of Chinese painting. But unlike Hongren,
who used dry brushwork to delineate mountains and trees, Zhang
uses a wetter brush, a mark of his own style. Though here Zhang
is clearly paying homage to an earlier artist, he was also a master
forger of historic Chinese paintings, and his work fooled numerous
connoisseurs and museums from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Summer 2023 Gallery Rotation 
__________

Zhang Daqian

China, 1899–1983

Mountain Landscape after Hongren

Modern period (1912–present)
1935
Hanging scroll, ink and light color on paper Gift of the Marvin Felheim Collection, 1955/2.13

Zhang Daqian, a versatile artist and flamboyant personality, is one of the most renowned Chinese artists of the twentieth century, adept at calligraphy, painting, and poetry. His painting style combines the techniques of Western art and traditional Chinese painting.

Zhang was a collector of paintings by past masters, from which he learned a wide range of styles. This work features the austere landscape style of the seventeenth-century painter Hongren. By paying tribute to Hongren, Zhang places himself within the great historical tradition of Chinese painting. But unlike Hongren, who used dry brushwork to delineate mountains and trees, Zhang uses a wetter brush, a mark of his own style. Though here Zhang is paying homage to an earlier artist, he was also a master forger of historic Chinese paintings, and his work fooled numerous connoisseurs and museums from the 1950s through the 1980s.