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Guo Xi (Chinese, ca. 1000–ca. 1090)
Old Trees, Level Distance, Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), ca. 1080
Handscroll: ink and color on silk; 13 3/4 x 41 1/4 in. (35.9 x 104.8 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of John M. Crawford, Jr., in honor of Douglas Dillon, 1981 (1981.276)

Curator Comment

Guo Xi, the preeminent landscape painter of the late eleventh century, sought to give form to poetic images and emotions rather than to the "principles" of nature. This intimately scaled painting is a late work done for a fellow government official on the eve of his retirement. The opening section sets the mood: two fishermen in their boats and travelers moving toward the distant mountains are harbingers of an imminent journey into retirement and the final stage of life that waits at the end of the road. The leafless trees and deepening mist impart a forlorn, autumnal air to the scene. The second half of the scroll narrows the focus. A diagonal embankment draws the eye leftward to a bridge where two elderly figures make their way toward a pavilion. Their stooped forms are echoed by two craggy foreground trees that seem connected at the root. The pavilion may represent one of the kiosks built on the outskirts of the capital where colleagues might gather to bid farewell to a departing friend. Several attendants have gone ahead with food baskets and a zither to prepare a simple meal. Given the advanced age of the two gentlemen, it is likely that this meeting will be their last. The intense emotions of the moment are subtly conveyed by the landscape.

During Philippe de Montebello's tenure as director, the opening of the Douglas Dillon Galleries for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy in 1981, together with the Astor Garden Court, marked the first steps toward building the largest permanent exhibition space for Chinese painting outside Asia.

Maxwell K. Hearn, Douglas Dillon Curator, Department of Asian Art