Landscape

The monumental mountainside consists of a mass of fine „axe-cut strokes“, ink points, contours of leaves and tree trunks filled with color, with lighter areas indicated in a moist brush. The work represents a typical example of Chen Yunzhang’s work in the style of Song landscape painting, as interpreted by the Ming painters (particularly Tang Yin), whose paintings Chen had studied. The figure of the man of letters on a bridge in the foreground is also reminiscent of a famous picture of the Ming master Shen Zhou (1427–1509), Lofty Mount Lu. Chen Yunzhang, better known by his courtesy name Chen Shaomei, was a prominent landscape painter of the first half of the 20th century. The work comes from the American collector Alfred Stern and his wife Martha Dodd Stern, bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1991.