Zhang Yucai, the 38th Celestial Master of Mount Longhu, was renowned for his paintings of bamboo and dragons. (It is only during the Yuan dynasty that Daoist worthies of such rank began to be recorded as artists.) Praised for his skills in bringing forth rain, he may have made this monumental scroll of four dragons—their bulging bodies vanishing into and emerging from the clouds and waves, their white eyeballs protruding from their heads—as part of a Daoist rainmaking ritual. Ink washes in a fine gray scale create effects of depth and light that contrast with the sharp white outlines of the dragons.
