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Travelers Among Mountains and Streams
Fan Kuan · Naïve, folk & other
- Artist
- Fan Kuan (active c. 990–1030)
- Date
- c. 1000
- Dimensions
- 206.3 x 103.3 cm
- Medium
- Hanging scroll, ink and light colour on silk
- Location
- National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
This towering landscape shows an immense mountain rising straight up from the middle of the scroll, with a thin waterfall falling down its side. Far below, among rocks and trees, a tiny caravan of travellers and mules makes its way along a path.
A closer look
The mountain fills two thirds of the picture, seen head-on, solid and monumental, while the humans are almost lost at the bottom. Fan Kuan built up the rock surfaces with countless small, dense brush marks, later called 'raindrop strokes', which give the stone a rough, weathered texture. A band of mist separates the foreground from the mountain, creating a sense of vast distance without Western perspective. The painting expresses the Daoist and Confucian view of humanity as a small part of the great order of nature, and it is considered one of the supreme masterpieces of Chinese landscape painting.