Artist: Ma Yuan (active 1190-1225)
Title: Walking on a Mountain Path
Material: ink and color on silk, album leaf 10 3/4" by 17".
Site:
Current Location: National Palace Museum Taibei.
Period/Date: Southern Song dynasty
Iconography/Iconology: An essay by the Northern Song artist, Guo Xi
states that it was a virtuous man that appreciates and enjoys landscapes.
" Why the virtuous man particularly? Because, by being virtuous (in
other words a good Confucian), he accepts his responsibilities to society
and the state, which tie him down to the urban life of an official. He cannot
'seclude himself and shun the world,' he cannot wander for years among the
mountains [in other words like a Daoist recluse], but he can nourish his
spirit by taking imaginary journeys through a landscape painting into which
the artist has compressed the beauty, grandeur, and the silence of nature,
and return to his desk refreshed." (Sullivan, 158)
The scholar and his attendant on a "mountain path" approach a
distant vista that is completely fog shoruded. The scholar-visitor to the
wilderness gazes off at a bird who flies into the mystical infinity of the
universe. Even, the mountain of the title is completely lacking in the composition
and it is for the observer to examine the view and create his or her own
mountian, valleys, and rivers.
Stylistic Comments: Ma Yuan came to be known as "One corner
Ma" because of his tendency to place the majority of the compositional
elements in one corner of the painting. Using the "one corner"
arrangement for this painting, Ma Yuan created a masterpiece of holding
and directing the viewer's gaze. Visually entering the painting from the
right, the observer is immediately confronted by the figure of a scholar
looking in the direction of the entry point and gazing up at a hovering
bird. As the viewer instinctively follows the scholar's gaze, his or her
eye finds the bird which is itself moving further into the distance, and
therefore, back to the observational entry point. This creates a visual
loop in which the viewer is entrapped. Reinforcing this compositional device
is the arc of the tree which further blocks the observer's visual path towards
the left of the composition, and reinforces the return of the viewer's eye
to the bird. It is only after several visual attempts that the observer
actually discovers the youth carrying the musical instrument,chin,
amidst the trees behind the scholar.
The rendering of the mist with its subtle gradations is characteristic of
the painting of the Ma Xia school. The tree at the left is typical of Ma
Yuan's renderings of trees which served as a model for successive generations.
The roots of the tree loop out of the ground as would happen to those of
great age. The trunk itself is formed with two dark lines, filled in with
light washes and pepper dot strokes to provide slight texture. The branches
of the willow are little more than thin wisps of grey against the mist.
Typical of the Ma Xia school, Ma Yuan uses the "axe-cut" stroke
in a forceful manner to render the river bank on which the scholar walks.
The artist also uses a specific stroke, known by the descriptive term "nail-head/rat-tail,"
to define the folds of the scholar's robe. Although named brush strokes
were in use for several generations by painters prior to the time of the
Ma Xia school, it is with this school that systematic codification of brush
strokes began with earnest.
Micheal Sullivan. The Arts of China, Berkeley, Los angeles, London:University
of California Press, 1984
