#Mountain landscape professional#

The scholars were educated in the moral teachings of the Confucian classics and thus supposedly endowed with inner virtue and outward refinement, for example, versed in the fine arts of poetry, music, painting and calligraphy. to 1911, China was governed by a civil bureaucracy of scholar-officials, who were recruited by a system of examinations under the Emperor. Additional information: From the third century B.C.Dong advocated a creative approach to painting by transforming the styles of the ancients into an individual style of one’s own. Through both his paintings and writings, in which he restated the literati (scholar-amateur) theory of painting, he exerted great influence on his contemporaries and later Chinese painters. Escaping from the political turmoil at the imperial court in Peking, he took a stand of non-involvement in politics and chose to play a dominant role in the world of art. His life as an official was interrupted by long intervals of retirement in his home in the south of China. As a young man, he passed the civil examinations and became an official, rising to such high positions as President of the Board of Rites and tutor to the heir-apparent of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Dong was born in Shanghai but later moved to Huating, Songjiang prefecture, Jiangsu province.

Biography: Dong Qichang was a prominent scholar-official and a brilliant scholar who was influential as an art connoisseur, collector, critic and historian as well as a calligrapher and painter.

Text by Dr Mae Anna Pang © National Gallery of Victoria, Australia ( Dong Qichang quoted in Mae Anna Pang, Mountains and Streams from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2006, p.51) Painting is not equal to ‘mountains-and-streams’ for the wonder of scenery but `mountains-and-streams’ are not equal to painting for the sheer marvels of brush and ink. The close relationship between calligraphy and painting is illustrated by Dong’s comment on nature and art: The uppermost mountain peak seems punctured by a blank hole, as if torn away from the landmass, creating a disturbing dissonance in the landscape. The austere, solitary, semi-abstract landscape does not so much represent an actual place as express the artist’s inner spiritual world. In their place, Dong emphasises the tonal and textural gradations of ink and the dynamic movements of form and line, abstract qualities found in calligraphy, and regarded by Chinese scholars as the highest form of visual art. The human figure, a reminder of the banal and dusty world, is also excluded. It reflects the ideals of scholar-amateur painting – unassuming, bland (pingdan) (subtle), childlike awkwardness and concealment of brilliance.

#Mountain landscape professional#

In this arid, lofty landscape, Dong consciously renounces decoration, narrative interest and display of technical skill, which were characteristic of paintings by professional and court painters. The inscription translates: `In the dingsi year (1617), the 15th day of the 9th (lunar) month, I painted (wrote) this as a gift for the envoy Xuayin in the Lezhi garden at Wulin’.

Dong Qichang inscribed this painting in elegant calligraphy, which says that he painted the landscape to give it as a present to a friend, a scholar-official. In this work Dong Qichang has created a highly original and revolutionary work.