元　王蒙　丹崖翠壑圖　軸|Red Cliffs and Green Valleys

Wang Meng

ca. 1367 · Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Asian Art

Wang Meng’s grandfather Zhao Mengfu was one of the first artists to make landscape paintings that referred knowingly to earlier styles. This idea, simple on its face but revolutionary in its impact, required not just a knowledge of art history but the ability to forge something new out of it, and it became the dominant mode for ambitious landscape painters going forward. This intimately scaled hanging scroll shows Wang Meng working in this vein, using ropy texturing brushstrokes and vigorous dotting to refer to elements of his grandfather’s style and to those still-earlier painters who had inspired it.

Artist

Wang Meng

Date

ca. 1367

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink on paper

Culture

China

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Purchase, Gift of Darius Ogden Mills and Gift of Mrs. Robert Young, by exchange, 1973