Reminiscence of Jinling

Wang Gai was a gifted stylist who worked in Nanjing in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Like his contemporaries Fan Qi, Ye Xin, and Gao Cen (their work is displayed nearby), Wang’s experiments with spatial depth and the play of light may suggest a familiarity with European pictures. The artist’s inscription indicates that he made this handscroll as an homage to a painting by Huang Zongyan, an ardent Ming loyalist. Given that Huang died in 1686, this work may be Wang’s tribute to the recently deceased artist. The title reads “Reminiscences of Jinling [Nanjing],” but the specifics of the scene, which appears to depict a dramatic flood, have not been identified.