Mansions in the Mountains

Mansions in the Mountains, ink and color painting on silk created by the 10th-century Chinese artist Dong Yuan. The scroll exemplifies the elegance of his brush painting, a style that became the standard in China for the next nine centuries.

Dong Yuan was active in what is now the province of Jiangsuwithin the Southern Tang court at Nanjing during the Ten Kingdoms period. Despite the political instability of the time, southern China enjoyed peace, prosperity, and cultural growth. Dong Yuan was a founder of the southern school of landscape painting and was seen as one of the four best Chinese artists of his time.

Dong Yuan’s scenery was innovative in its use of techniques such as crosshatching. Mansions in the Mountains portrays a vast gorge that is penetrated by a mountain stream; the mountains lead down to the mansion covered by mist. With a complex harmony that evokes divine perfection as witnessed in nature, paradise is viewed from a high, heavenly perspective. In this work Dong Yuan renders an atmosphere of peace, wisdom, and power.