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Cloudy Mountains

Mi Youren Chinese
before 1200
Not on view
The son of Mi Fu (1052–1107), Mi Youren was an accomplished scholar-artist and the leading connoisseur of his time, often acting as the authenticator of ancient paintings for the emperor. He rose to the position of vice president of the Board of War. The simplified, blurry mountain forms, which Mi Youren inherited from his father (there is no longer any reliable example of the older Mi's painted work), represent a significant break from the detailed Northern Sung landscape styles. Created with wet ink dots (called "Mi-family dots"), this style of landscape painting is the immediated predecessor of the evocative ink-wash landscape style of the later Southern Song period. Referred to by scholar-artists as "ink play," the style suggests the importance of the painter's psychological expression, thereby raising the status of painting to that of poetry and calligraphy.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • 南宋 米友仁 雲山圖 卷
  • Title: Cloudy Mountains
  • Artist: Mi Youren (Chinese, 1074–1151)
  • Period: Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279)
  • Date: before 1200
  • Culture: China
  • Medium: Handscroll; ink on paper
  • Dimensions: Image: 10 7/8 × 22 7/16 in. (27.6 × 57 cm)
    Overall with mounting: 11 3/16 in. × 24 ft. 6 3/16 in. (28.4 × 747.2 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Purchase, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, by exchange, 1973
  • Object Number: 1973.121.1
  • Curatorial Department: Asian Art

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