Online Paintings

This album express Dong Qichang's explanation of the entire spectrum of Song and Yuan styles using a set of different brushstroke methods, which could also be used for describe actual landscapes. The great philosopher and painter took as his point of leaving the works of the Yuan master Ni Zan (1306–1374), whose paintings were stare as calligraphic abstraction of earlier Song styles. In the first two leaves, Dong contrasts in what he look upon as the early and late styles of Ni Zan's art—an earthen landscape (round, parallel, hemp-fiber brushstrokes) with a rocky one (angular, oblique, folded-ribbon brushstrokes). In successive foliage, Dong juxtaposes various earthen and rocky themes in order to evoke dissimilar model styles of the Northern Song period.