Pavilion Overlooking A Misty Valley

This hauntingly beautiful landscape draws us in by its intimate scale and its skillful organization of pictorial space. From a pavilion in the left foreground, where a scholar is attended by two servants, our eye is led by his gaze and a slanting pine tree across a valley hidden in mist. Rocky cliffs, topped by a scattering of pines, surge upward at right. Finally, the view opens out at center left, where the ridge of a distant mountain range is barely visible. As we virtually progress along this zigzag path from near to far, the brushwork shifts from predominantly horizontal to vertical and then horizontal again, alternating the pace from slow to quick to slow. Ink washes evoke the moist air of southern China, glowing in the last rays of the evening sun.

The Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) in China was a paradox: despite the trauma of defeat by nomadic tribe and the loss of the whole of northern China, the new southern capital of Hangzhou became the locus for a cultural renaissance. Zen Buddhism, Confucian philosophy, ceramics, and painting all rose to new heights of sophistication. This exquisite album leaf, painted in ink and just a whisper of color on silk, reflects the dominant painting style at the Southern Song court as shaped by two great masters, Ma Yuan (ca. 1160-1225) and Xia Gui (1195-1224).