Homage to a Strange Rock

This striking image of a fantastically shaped garden rock was inscribed by admirers throughout the eighteenth century. Like most of the artists in this exhibition, Lan Ying lived through the fall of the Ming dynasty. In his early years, he left his native Hangzhou for a period of study in Songjiang, where he immersed himself in the historically oriented landscape painting of the Dong Qichang (1555–1636) circle. While he is not known to have traveled to Nanjing, he had connections with many artists who did journey there, a sign of the fluidity of the art world in the Yangzi River delta region.