Dong Yuan (d. 962 AD) was an important innovator in Chinese landscape painting.
He lived during the Five Dynasties period (907 – 979 AD), when landscape painting innovation developed like never before.
His influence helped the art reach its full height during Northern Song period (960 – 1127 AD) that followed.
Dong did this by creating mysterious and inviting scenes that have inspired artists and viewers for centuries since.
Contents
Life and times
Dong Yuan (d. 962) (董源 [Dǒng Yuán], sometimes written as 董元 [same pronunciation]), courtesy name Shu Da, was from Zhongling in Hongzhou (today part of Nanchang, Jiangxi Province).
He lived during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom period (907 – 979 AD) (often referred to as the Five Dynasties for short).
This violent, uncertain period took place between the fall and rise of two of China’s greatest eras: the Tang (618 – 907 AD) and Song (960 – 1279 AD) dynasties.
Dong was a court painter and Assistant Administrator of the North Park (a relatively minor government position) the Southern Tang state (937 – 975 AD).
He was based in the Southern Tang capital of Jinling (today’s Nanjing).
He was listed as having collaborated on a painting that depicted the Southern Tang ruler Li Jing (reigned 943 – 961) celebrating snowfall with his officials on New Year’s Day 947.
Dong’s landscape painting
Dong Yuan is primarily known for his landscape painting.
The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings lists 78 of Dong’s paintings in the royal collection of 1120 AD.
It also mentions his paintings of dragons, oxen, fishing boats, gods, Buddhist sages, and birds.
However, today, only his landscapes (or copies of his landscapes) still exist.
The Xuanhe Catalogue also states that Dong gained fame for his colour landscapes at a time when not many painters created them well.
至其出自胸臆，写山水江湖、风雨溪谷、峰峦晦明、林霏烟云，与夫千岩万壑，重汀绝岸，使鉴者得之，真若寓目于其处也。
– Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings, scroll 11
Things emanated from his heart and mind: landscapes filled with rivers and lakes, valleys full of wind and rain, gloomy and bright ridges and peaks, woods covered in thick mist and cloud, many cliffs and even more galleys, multiple riverbanks and sheer shores. These features transport the viewer directly to the scene.
It also remarks on the awe-inspiring nature of his work:
大抵元所画山水，下笔雄伟，有崭绝峥嵘之势，重峦绝壁，使人观而壮之 […]
– Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings, scroll 11
Most of Yuan’s landscapes are grand and imposing. They contain precipitous and lofty appearances. His sheer mountain ranges and cliffs convey a sense of strength to viewers […]
Dong uses a variety of strokes, dots, and other ink techniques to create his unique mixture of clear and misty imagery. His dabbed ink over forms to soften their outlines, for example.
The colour in his work is more subtle than the earlier, bright style of landscape painting popular in the Tang dynasty.
Jiangnan style paintings
Along with his follower, the painting monk Juran (ca. active 960 – 985), Dong is considered a leading figure of the ‘Jiangnan style’ of landscape painting.
Jiangnan (江南) refers to the area immediately south of the Huai River in the southern half of eastern of China.
It can be defined in different ways, including as an area which covers today’s Nanjing, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and more.
This area has many lakes, rivers, and rolling hills covered in dense and rich vegetation.
Painted depictions of this area often contrasted greatly with contemporary northern Chinese paintings. The later often featured harsher, more mountainous scenery.
Examples of this northern style include the Chang’an painter Guan Tong (ca. 907 – ca. 960). And perhaps the most esteemed of all Chinese landscape painters, Li Cheng (919 – 967 AD).
Dong himself attributed the Jiangnan style’s founding to the great Tang poet and painter, Wang Wei (701 – 761 AD).
The Jiangnan style goes north
Dong’s Jiangnan (or southern) style of painting spread to the North of China via Dong’s follower, the monk Juran.
Once the Southern Tang state had been defeated, its remnants moved north to the newly establish Song dynasty capital, Bianjing (today’s Kaifeng, Henan Province).
One of Juran’s significant artistic commissions was to paint the Jade Hall in 992.
This hall was the main office of the Institute of Academicians (similar to a modern Ministry of Education and Culture).
Here, many important political and cultural figures would have been exposed to the aesthetics and mastery of the Jiangnan style.
Dong Yuan’s development as a painter
Dong Yuan’s landscape painting style changed over time.
Early on, it was more realistic and detailed. Later on, it became broader and ethereal (see below, for his two known paintings).
The Chinese art historian Wen C. Fong remarked on the difference between these two paintings.
He stated that Dong Yuan went ‘from his early unadorned naturalism (without exaggeration of sentimentality) in Riverbank to simple calligraphic formulation of hemp fibre patterns in Wintry Groves […]’. And that:
When artists during the critical Song-Yuan transition in the late thirteenth century similarly felt they had reached a cul-de-sac in the mastery of xingsi, or form-likeness, they looked back and saw how Dong’s earlier complex, emotion-filled naturalism was superseded by his later simplified, archaizing visual schema, resurrecting an archaic conceptual visual tableau of a flat distant view.
– Wen C. Fong, ‘Two Dong Yuans: Dual Paradigms of Naturalism and Calligraphic Expression’
Riverbank
Riverbank is likely a relatively early painting by Dong Yuan. Some art historians have dated it at about the late 930s.
It is a hanging scroll (i.e., a vertical or portrait-shaped rectangle) that primarily depicts a tranquil landscape of steep riverbanks, a river and rocks alongside a winding pathway.
Trees are scattered across these banks, which stretch off into the distance. And there are other features placed amongst all of this, including:
- Trees
- Water (including a shore and a multi-section waterfall)
- Rocks
- Human structures (a pavilion, thatched houses, farming storage, bamboo fences, gates, pathways, and a pier)
- Human figures (peasant workers, servants, children, a scholar and two women)
- A water buffalo.
Today, it looks monochrome (i.e., just ink on silk without colours), but the original did feature light colours that have darkened with age.
Riverbank’s narrative
Once seen, the details of the picture point to a clearer narrative or atmosphere.
The dark clouds at the top of the painting suggest a coming storm. The geese are not in a v-formation, which perhaps suggests they are struggling in strong winds.
Trees along the banks bend in the wind.
The travellers and peasants, who are all heading in the same direction, are wearing straw hats. Perhaps, like the geese, they anticipate worse weather and are hurrying to shelter?
In the residences behind the bamboo fence, we see three women different preparing or carrying food. They anticipate people returning.
In the pavilion that sits on stilts in the river, the seated scholar-official looks out across the choppy waters. (We know he’s a scholar because of the type of hat he is wearing).
Perhaps him and his family are more directly exposed to the elements than the paintings’ other figures?
After all, they look out directly onto the waters, they are not protected by being more inland and behind a fence.
Either way, the scholar-official looks contemplative and calm.
Do all of these details add up to a narrative of uncertainty and turbulence brewing? Can we anticipate from this a metaphor for the political situation in Five Dynasties China?
To add weight to this, the location seems to be one of seclusion. In China, a retreat to the mountains often symbolised safety during difficult times.
Or perhaps this is simply a depiction of daily life at the time. Each figure is busy with their own tasks, including the scholar whose work is mental, not physical.
Riverbank’s ownership over the centuries
Owners of important Chinese paintings often placed their seals (red-ink stamps) directly on or around the painting itself.
From Riverbank’s seals, we can see that it was owned by the Song dynasty prime minister Jia Sidao (1213 – 1275) and then, after Jia’s death in 1275, by the Prince Zhao Yuqin (the Zhaos were the ruling family of the Song dynasty).
Prince Zhao did not get to enjoy owning the painting long. The Mongols toppled the Song dynasty in 1279 and a lot of the royal art collection was scattered across China.
The next known owner was Wang Ziqing in the 1280s.
(Around this time, another Song dynasty ruling family relative, the official, calligrapher and artist Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322) got to see the painting.)
We know that the painter Ke Jiusi (1290 – 1343 AD) also owned the painting. There is also an official Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644) half-seal on the painting. It indicates that the painting entered the royal collection between 1374 – 1384.
Then, another great official, calligrapher, and artist Dong Qichang (1555 – 1636) owned the work.
A seal also exists on the painting by the collector Zhang Shanzi (1882 – 1940).
In 1938, the art collector Xu Beihong (1895 – 1953) sold the painting to Zhang Daqian (1899 – 1989) in Guilin, Guanxi Province. At the time, they thought the painting was entitled The Water Village.
The collector C. C. Wang (1907 – 2003) acquired the painting from Zhang in the late 1960s. He had it remounted by the Japanese art preservation expert Meguru Sanji.
In 1998, C. C. Wang gave 25 of his paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remains to this day.
The question of Riverbank’s authenticity
Riverbank contains Dong Yuan’s signature.
It is done in the script of the Confucian official and calligrapher Yan Zhenqing (709 – 984 AD). This style was particularly popular during the 10th and 11th centuries, when Dong lived.
However, this alone is not proof of the paintings authenticity.
In 1991, the distinguished Western Chinese art expert James Cahill (1926 – 2014) argued that Riverbank was likely a forgery by Zhang Daqian (one of the painting’s previous owners).
Cahill listed several reasons for why he felt the painting was not done by Dong. One example was its use of particular special techniques:
While one can find landforms that function dynamically in early Chinese landscape composition, there are none quite like those in Riverbank, which lunge diagonally and are countered by masses lunging in the opposite direction. The artist, I submit, was very familiar with this compositional method as it had been developed by Dong Qichang and his followers […]
– ‘The Case Against Riverbank: An Indictment in Fourteen Counts’ in: Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), p. 33
Dong Yuan, of course, lived about six centuries before Dong Qichang.
Wintry Groves and Layered Banks
Wintry Groves and Layered Banks is believed to be from Dong Yuan’s later period.
Today, it looks monochrome, but the original (like Riverbank) also featured light colours than have long since faded into a darker tone.
It depicts a winter landscape, complete with snow, bare trees, and a flat, far-away horizon and other details.
Houses can be seen partially hidden by trees or hills, and thin, winding path leads to a small, empty bridge before disappearing.
And wilting reeds are scattered throughout the picture, which adds a layer of windswept chilliness to the already stark environment.
The scholarly recluse theme was popular during the Southern Tang court, where the rulers Li Jing and Li Yu cultivated it as an ideal.
Dong Yuan’s influence of later Chinese landscape painting
Dong Yuan died in the early part of the Song dynasty, which is the dynasty when landscape painting is generally considered to have reached its peak.
Dong Yuan’s influence can clearly be seen in the paintings produced during this era (and later). And it was often explicitly stated by painters themselves.
The style present in early Song dynasty painter Fan Kuan’s (active ca. 1023 – 1031 AD) work shows a clear influence.
This influence waned in the proceeding decades. But about half a century later, the calligrapher and painter Mi Fu (1051 – 1107 AD) helped revive and promote Dong’s posthumous reputation.
He admired the Dong’s ‘plain’ (or prosaic) (平淡) quality in some of Dong’s work. And he wrote in his History of Painting (ca. 1101 AD):
余家董源雾景横披全幅，山骨隐显，林稍出没，意趣高古。
in the landscape of a cloudy scene by Dong Yuan in my collection, when one unrolls the whole scroll, the structure of the mountains is hidden and revealed, the branches of trees emerge and disappear, and the mood is lofty and antique.
– Mi Fu, History of Painting
The leading Yuan dynasty artist Zhao Mengfu (1254 – 1322 AD) also appreciated Dong’s painting.
Like other Yuan painters, he was concerned with reverting back to earlier forms of painting. He chose Dong Yuan as a model for this.
And Zhao’s younger contemporary, Huang Gongwang (1269 – 1354 AD) affirmed the importance of learning from Dong in his (Huang’s) essay Secrets of Landscape Painting.
董源小山石。谓之矾头。山中有云气。此皆金陵山景。皴法要渗软。下有沙地。用淡墨扫。屈曲为之。再用淡墨破。
– Huang Gongwang, Secrets of Landscape Painting
Dong Yuan [d. ca 962 AD] small mountain rocks are called ‘alum rocks’. [His] mountains’ had cloud mist amongst them. This is all a part of the Jinling [Nanjing] mountains scenes. Below is desert ground. Use diluted ink and a sweeping brush. Waving winding movements. Then use link ink to break it up.
Dong’s brushwork was a clear inspiration for Huang’s masterpiece, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (ca. 1347).
