Fan Kuan

Fan Kuan

Travellers among Mountains and Streams (谿山行旅), ink and slight color on silk, dimensions of 6¾ ft x 2½ ft.[1] National Palace Museum, Taipei[2]
Born c. 960
Died c. 1030
Nationality Chinese
Known for Landscapes
Movement Song Dynasty, Northern Landscape style

Fan Kuan (Chinese: 范寬; pinyin: Fàn Kuān; Wade–Giles: Fan K’uan) (c. 960 - c. 1030;[3] fl. 990–1020)[1] was a Chinese landscape painter of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) considered among the great masters of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Travelers among Mountains and Streams, a large hanging scroll, is Fan Kuan's best known work and a seminal painting of the Northern Song school. It establishes an ideal in monumental landscape painting to which later painters were to return time and again for inspiration.[4] The classic Chinese perspective of three planes is evident - near, middle (represented by water and mist), and far. Unlike earlier examples of Chinese landscape art, the grandeur of nature is the main theme, rather than merely providing a backdrop.[3] A packhorse train can barely be seen emerging from a wood at the base of a towering precipice. The painting's style encompasses archaic conventions dating back to the Tang Dynasty.[5]

The historian Patricia Ebrey explains her view on the painting that the:

...foreground, presented at eye level, is executed in crisp, well-defined brush strokes. Jutting boulders, tough scrub trees, a mule train on the road, and a temple in the forest on the cliff are all vividly depicted. There is a suitable break between the foreground and the towering central peak behind, which is treated as if it were a backdrop, suspended and fitted into a slot behind the foreground. There are human figures in this scene, but it is easy to imagine them overpowered by the magnitude and mystery of their surroundings.[6]

Fan's masterpiece Travellers among Mountains and Streams bears a lost half-hidden signature rediscovered only in 1958.[5]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 162.
  2. ↑ Liu, 50.
  3. 1 2 Conrad Schirokauer; Miranda Brown; David Lurie; Suzanne Gay (1 January 2012). A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. Cengage Learning. p. 223. ISBN 0-495-91322-7.
  4. ↑ Sullivan, The Arts of China, 179.
  5. 1 2 Sullivan, The Arts of China, 180.
  6. ↑ Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 162–163.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fan Kuan.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/4/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.