Landscape

After passing the palace examination with high honors in 1607, Zhang Ruitu held a number of important government posts before being elevated to the grand secretariat in 1626 through the support of the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627). Zhang, a renowned calligrapher, won favor with Wei by writing out texts composed in the eunuch's honor. Although Zhang retired from office in 1628, shortly after Wei's downfall (and decapitation), he was later listed as one of the eunuch's followers and escaped imprisonment only by paying a large fine. He spent his last years in his native Fujian, and most of his paintings date to that period. Renouncing Dong Qichang's (1555–1636) emphasis on dynamic brushwork and calligraphic abstraction, Zhang developed his own lyrical interpretation of the Northern Song monumental landscape style. His Song sources are apparent here in the use of satin rather than paper, the elongated vertical format, the dense buildup of texture strokes, and the tripartite separation of foreground, middle ground, and distant elements. Zhang's poetic couplet is inscribed in his powerful regular script:

A boat moves from the city wall into the trees;
The riverbanks are far apart and the water reflects the sky.