Xia Gui served the Southern Song court in the early years of the thirteenth century. Like his colleague Ma Yuan, Xia produced small, gem-like landscapes that suited the court’s taste, but where Ma favored subtly graded washes of color, Xia sought infinite variety within the gradations of monochrome ink and often employed chunkier brushstrokes. On this album leaf, Xia suggests layers of atmospheric mist through carefully calibrated differences in ink tone, evoking a world of mystery and vastness within a tiny piece of silk. Like many court artists, Xia trained his son, Xia Sen, as a painter.
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南宋 夏珪 山市晴嵐圖 冊頁
Title:Mountain Market, Clearing Mist
Artist:Xia Gui (Chinese, active ca. 1195–1230)
Period:Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279)
Date:early 13th century
Culture:China
Medium:Album leaf; ink on silk
Dimensions:9 3/4 x 8 3/8 in. (24.8 x 21.3 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1913
Accession Number:13.100.102
Inscription: Artist's signature (2 characters in semi-cursive script)
Xia Gui 夏圭
Label strip
Unidentified artist, 1 column in standard script, undated:
Xia Gui of the Southern Song dynasty 南宋夏圭
John C. Ferguson American, until 1913; sold to MMA]
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Seoul. National Museum of Korea. "Landscapes: Seeking the Ideal World," July 22, 2014–September 21, 2014.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from The Met Collection (Rotation One)," October 31, 2015–October 11, 2016.
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He Muwen 何慕文 (Hearn, Maxwell K.). Ruhe du Zhongguo hua: Daduhui Yishu Bowuguan cang Zhongguo shuhua jingpin daolan 如何读中国画 : 大都会艺术博物馆藏中国书画精品导览 (How to read Chinese paintings) Translated by Shi Jing 石静. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2015, pp. 58–61, cat. no. 10.
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