Ten Thousand Valleys in Deep Shade

Huang Binhong was born into a family of scholars and artists in Shexian, Anhui Province. He expressed his anti-Qing sentiments in literati fashion by organizing a local club to honor a seventeenth-century scholar who had defied the corrupt government of his time. When a warrant was issued for his arrest, Huang fled to Shanghai, where he worked as an editor of art books and magazines and gained exposure to the private collections scattered throughout the area. In the 1930s he helped examine the palace collection in Beijing in order to prepare it for dispersal prior to the impending Japanese invasion.

This painting, inspired by the brush idiom of the tenth-century monumental landscapist Juran, was executed while Huang was traveling in Sichuan. The dense shade of the trees and flowers covers the many mountains.The shadow of these [mountains, coiled like] dark green snails, oozes into the stream.A few forsaken leaves are turning red and yellow.It is easy for autumn to come to Baidi City because of its altitude.

(Robert H. Ellsworth et al., trans., Later Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 1800-1950, 3 vols. [New York: Random House, 1987], vol. 1, p. 150)