Mountainous Landscape in the Blue and Green Style

The artwork depicts a jagged mountain range zigzagging across virtually the entire painting. The bottom part details various types of trees and figures crossing the river on a bridge resting on pillars. A long staircase leading to the monastery structures on the mountain slopes rises in the painting’s centre. The work is done in the style known as blue and green landscape painting which has a long tradition in Chinese painting – the painters Li Sixun (653–718) and Wang Wei (ca. 699–760) introduced it as early as the Tang dynasty (618–907). Clearly, the unknown painter sought to give his work both a major collecting history and the archaic atmosphere associated with blue and green painting. The painting was brought to Czechoslovakia by Josef Martínek (1888–1976), from whom the National Gallery in Prague acquired some of its unique tomb figures and ancient sculptures. This blue and green landscape painting is typical of the works purchased by European collectors for their visual attractiveness and seemingly archaic origin.