River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day

Description

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.

Provenance

Gao Shiqi 高士奇 [1645–1703]; Song Luo 宋犖 [1634–1713]; Shao Changheng 邵長蘅 [1637–1704]; Qing imperial collection (seals of Emperors Qianlong, r. 1736–1795, Jiaqing, r. 1796–1820, and Xuantong, r. 1909–1911) (c. 1736–1910); (C. C. Wang 王季遷 [1907–2003], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (?–1959); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1959–)

River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day

Dong Qichang

c. 1624–27

Accession Number

1959.46

Medium

Handscroll; ink on Korean paper

Dimensions

Painting only: 38.4 x 136.8 cm (15 1/8 x 53 7/8 in.)

Classification

Painting

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund