Artist: Ni Zan (Ni Tsan) (1301-1374)
Title: Trees in a River Valley at Yu Shan. (Painting dated 1371. )
Material: ink and color on paper.
Site:
Current Location:
Period/Date: Yuan dynasty
Iconography/Iconology:
Stylistic Comments: Far more typical of the majority of Ni Zan's paintings than the painting on the previous screens, open and sparcely filled landscape exhibits the commonly met with compositional conventions of Ni Zan. The high rising middle ground actually divides the painting into two registers, the foreground and the background divided by a large unpainted area in the middle of the picture. (This feature is so common, that a number of Ni Zan paintings have been cut in half by unscrupulous dealers, effectively dividing a single paiting into two.) If one examines the uppor portion of the painting, there is essentially the a river foregorund and a mountain background that receeds through overlapping perspective as do most chinese paintings. Looking at the foregoround, there are the boulders and trees against the riverscape. However, in the middle of the complsition there is an apparent spatial doscontinuity as if the foreground and the background were at defferent elevations. Yet, given the water in the middle ground, this is impossible. The result is to flatten the picture's space and severly distort the sense of recession.
