1626
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day is a 1626 unspecified by Dong Qichang, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a long scroll of ink on paper: soft gray mountains, a winding river, and tiny trees in autumn red. Dong Qichang painted this to look like an older artist’s work—he even wrote that the earlier painter would have liked it. The shapes are simple, almost like calligraphy, but they still feel like real hills and water. If you want to see how Chinese artists borrowed from each other, look up china, ming dynasty (1368–1644).
Dong Qichang had a tremendous impact on the artistic practices and historiography of later generations; his works and writings shaped literati aesthetics. Here, Dong places an abstract landscape composition diagonally across the picture plane, configured to recall earlier masters and simultaneously express his own personal style. Dong’s inscription claims, Huang Gongwang’s Autumn Day, looks like this. I truly regret the master has not seen my work . In fact, Dong Qichang may have had Dong Yuan’s Xiao and Xiang Rivers in mind, a work he owned and considered a key work in Chinese art history.
The painting has an imprint of a Korean seal that reads "Seal of the king of Joseon."
Read the full account in the museum source.
Dong Qichang (Chinese: 董其昌; pinyin: Dǒng Qíchāng; Wade–Giles: Tung Ch'i-ch'ang; courtesy name Xuanzai (玄宰); 1555–1636) was a Chinese art theorist, calligrapher, painter, and politician of the later period of the Ming dynasty.
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