Clouds and Waterfalls at Yangdang
Lu Yanshao, from the Jiading district of Shanghai, received his early training from literati artists in the circle of the noted scholar-painter and connoisseur Wu Hufan (1894–1970).
During the war Lu augmented his study of the ancient masters by painting landscapes. Rather than depict these mountains from a distance, however, Lu cropped the image so that there is neither horizon nor repoussoir. The viewer is plunged into the midst of the landscape, where the visual drama is reinforced by the immediacy of the vigorous texture strokes and colorful washes.
Lu's inscription reads:
Early morning clouds rest halfway of the ridge, and waterfalls are draped across the thousand peaks. How magnificent is this view of the Yandang Mountain. Only after a long rain can you know its wonders.
(Wen Fong, trans., Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001], p. 254)
During the war Lu augmented his study of the ancient masters by painting landscapes. Rather than depict these mountains from a distance, however, Lu cropped the image so that there is neither horizon nor repoussoir. The viewer is plunged into the midst of the landscape, where the visual drama is reinforced by the immediacy of the vigorous texture strokes and colorful washes.
Lu's inscription reads:
Early morning clouds rest halfway of the ridge, and waterfalls are draped across the thousand peaks. How magnificent is this view of the Yandang Mountain. Only after a long rain can you know its wonders.
(Wen Fong, trans., Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001], p. 254)
Artwork Details
- 近代 陸儼少 雁蕩雲瀑圖 橫軸
- Title: Clouds and Waterfalls at Yangdang
- Artist: Lu Yanshao (Chinese, 1909–1993)
- Date: dated 1980
- Culture: China
- Medium: Horizontal hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions: Image: 21 3/4 x 45 1/4 in. (55.2 x 114.9 cm)
Overall with mounting: 84 1/2 x 46 1/8 in. (214.6 x 117.2 cm)
Overall with knobs: 84 1/2 x 50 5/8 in. (214.6 x 128.6 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, in memory of La Ferne Hatfield Ellsworth, 1986
- Object Number: 1986.267.397
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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