明　藍瑛　仿宋元山水圖　冊|Landscapes after Song and Yuan masters

Lan Ying

1642 · Album of twelve leaves; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Lan Ying was a breaker of boundaries. Dong Qichang and his cohort, the leading tastemakers of Lan’s day, tended to look down on painters who relied on virtuoso skill and flashy brushwork, preferring directness and simplicity. Lan, a prolific and skilled professional artist, nevertheless won them over, transcending his status as a professional and gaining provisional entry into the class of scholar-painters. Lan adopted Dong’s practice of making old-masters albums, and this is one of his finest. Here, Lan marries his eye for dramatic composition to an uncharacteristic restraint in brushwork, avoiding his more typical strong, angular forms that would have raised eyebrows among literati critics.

Artist

Lan Ying

Date

1642

Medium

Album of twelve leaves; ink and color on paper

Culture

China

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

The Sackler Fund, 1970