[Mountain Stream and Clear Distance Painting]

2026-03-15 23:20

The Painting of Clear Mountains and Streams was the masterpiece of Xia Gui, a famous painter in the Southern Song Dynasty. This painting was a paper ink landscape painting. It was nine meters long and was made up of ten pieces of paper. Other than the first section, which was 25 centimeters long, the other nine sections were about 96 centimeters long. It is now in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. In terms of painting style and techniques, Xia Gui used a hard brush as his main painting tool. His strokes were fast, powerful, free, and lively. Parallel strokes were used to describe the movement of leaves in the wind, and the texture of the rock surface was carved with a small axe, adding points, lines, and ink rendering elements to make the rock surface seem to sparkle with sunlight. In the mountain rock texturing method, often first use a water pen light ink sweep dye, take advantage of the wet with thick ink, form "slovenly water texturing". The key points of the tree copying method included using a bald pen center dipped in thick ink to draw the outline of the forest, gently rubbing at the knots, adding light ink along the outline to make the trunk clear, and using a similar "ink accumulation" painting method for the leaves. The painting depicted the magnificent scenery of Jiangnan. There were misty waves, overlapping peaks, scattered boulders, and distant mountains that created a misty atmosphere in Jiangnan. It also showed many elements of the lake and mountain scenery in detail, such as mountains, rocks, trees, pavilions, long bridges, cottages, thatched pavilions, fishing boats, sailing boats, etc. The scenery was varied and the density was appropriate, reflecting the artistic realm of "sparse can gallop a horse, dense but not airtight". The composition was simple, but the image was real and vivid. Xia Gui's landscape was imitated by Li Tang, and he also absorbed the strengths of Fan Kuan, Mi Fu, and Mi Youren to form his own style. He used small corners as the main composition method, which was called "Half Summer". Their painting style was similar to Ma Yuan's. Their paintings were influenced by the local customs and often appeared in the corners of the mountains. Their techniques were born out of Li Tang's. Moreover, their paintings were popular in the Southern Song Dynasty and were loved by the authorities. After they were introduced to Japan, they deeply influenced Japanese painting and formed the Kano School of Painting. In the Yuan Dynasty, although it was criticized by literati and painters, there were also scholars. For example, Wu Zhen, one of the four schools of the Yuan Dynasty, imitated the Xia Gui School of Painting. In addition, there was also a book called " The Great Painting Model of Ancient China Painting School in the Southern Song Dynasty, Four Xiagui Erxi Mountains, Clear and Far Painting ", which was published in July 2012 and could be imitated by painters. The novel "Listening to the Rain in Green Bamboo and Watching the Egrets" is equally wonderful. Everyone is welcome to click and read it!