明　傳蔣嵩　冬景山水圖　卷|Winter landscape

Jiang Song

first half 16th century · Handscroll; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Little is known about the Nanjing artist Jiang Song except that he descended from a family of imperial physicians and officials but chose to support himself as a professional painter. Concentrating on a limited repertoire of images—lone fishermen, scholars living in reclusion, and mountain travelers—all of which appear in this work, Jiang's paintings are noteworthy for their dramatically abstracted landscape forms, dashing brushwork, subtly graded washes, and bold contrasts in ink tone in the manner of Shi Zhong (1438–ca. 1517), another Nanjing painter known for his bravura snowscapes. This unsigned painting is attributed to Jiang Song on the basis of its similarity to a set of four short paintings now in the East Asian Art Museum, Berlin.

Artist

Jiang Song

Date

first half 16th century

Medium

Handscroll; ink and color on paper

Culture

China

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Seymour Fund, 1955