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the bottom of this scroll, the foreground contains textural details of the side
and top of the rocky shoreline, while the trees are presented from a level, or
frontal, perspective. The water (the unpainted paper surface) and the less detailed,
smaller-scale rocks and trees in the middle ground suggest receding space. The
large mountain in the upper section of the scroll is shown as if the viewer were
looking up at it. The smaller, pale hills to its right convey the massive size
of this mountain and create a sense of deeper distance within the painting.
Though born into wealth, Ni Zan abandoned his home and gave away his possessions,
including a vast collection of paintings and antiques, to avoid the heavy taxes
imposed by the Yuan government. He began an
itinerant life on a houseboat with his family, stopping at homes of friends along
the waterways around Lake Tai, known as China's "Great Lake," near the city of
Suzhou. Yet Ni Zan always yearned for his home. An
isolated cluster of trees by the shore of a lake was a motif that he repeated
over and over in his paintings. These upright trees of various kinds became symbols
of himself and his friends, isolated along the water from the social and political
upheavals of the last years of the Mongol-run Yuan government. Woods and Valleys
of Mount Yu was painted in 1372 to commemorate a visit with a friend only
a few years after the Chinese had regained political control and established the
Ming dynasty. Back
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