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Your galleryLandscape with Trees in the Manner of Ni Zan (1301–1374)
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Count the slender trunks rising from the rocks, then look at the strokes that shape those rocks and at the bare paper left all around them.
As its title says, Dong Qichang painted this in the manner of the Yuan master Ni Zan. The Met explains that Dong saw Ni’s spare style as a calligraphic distillation of the 10th-century master Dong Yuan, so he rebuilt Ni’s landscape with Dong Yuan’s hemp-fiber texture strokes. In his hands, landscape forms became abstractions close to calligraphy. His friend Chen Jiru added a colophon, and Wang Wenzhi another in 1786.
Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Image: 45 1/2 × 18 in. (115.6 × 45.7 cm · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Ming
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Landscape with Trees in the Manner of Ni Zan (1301–1374)
- Artist
- Dong Qichang (Chinese, 1555–1636)
- Date
- ca. 1622–25
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 45 1/2 × 18 in. (115.6 × 45.7 cm) Overall with mounting: 94 7/8 × 27 1/2 in. (241 × 69.9 cm) Overall with knobs: 94 7/8 × 31 1/2 in. (241 × 80 cm)
- Credit line
- Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1555–1636
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.