Landscape after a poem by Wang Wei
Tang Di was one of the first southern scholar-artists to revive the Northern Song landscape traditions of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and this composition is typical of the many large-scale works he produced in emulation of northern prototypes. While Northern Song masters were inclined to depict the dynamic forces of nature through richly descriptive pictorial techniques, Tang reinterpreted the style using more calligraphic conventions. Here, he uses the gnarled trees and desolate lowlands of eleventh-century masters to "illustrate" a couplet by Wang Wei (699–759):
I walk to where the water ends
And sit and watch as clouds arise.
I walk to where the water ends
And sit and watch as clouds arise.
Artwork Details
- 元 唐棣 摩詰詩意圖 軸
- Title: Landscape after a poem by Wang Wei
- Artist: Tang Di (Chinese, ca. 1287–1355)
- Period: Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
- Date: 1323
- Culture: China
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions: Image: 50 3/4 x 27 1/16 in. (128.9 x 68.7 cm)
Overall with mounting: 8 ft. 8 1/8 in. x 33 3/4 in. (264.5 x 85.7 cm)
Overall with knobs: 8 ft. 8 1/8 in. x 37 in. (264.5 x 94 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of Ernest Erickson Foundation, 1985
- Object Number: 1985.214.147
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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7411. Landscape after a Poem by Wang Wei
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