Buddhist Retreat by Stream and Mountains (960–85): Art, History and Details

Buddhist Retreat by Stream and Mountains (960–85) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Juran (Chinese, active 960–985).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Monk Juran served the Southern Tang (937–75) imperial house in Nanjing, where he studied with Dong Yuan (active 930s–60s). Both founded the southern landscape tradition, or Jiangnan school, known for gentle misty riverscapes in wet ink. Juran moved north to Kaifeng when the Southern Tang surrendered to the Northern Song, the impact of which may be seen in this painting, presumably painted after 976. A towering mountain dominates the composition, typically representing the style of the Northern Song academy; while the use of long hemp fiber strokes to texture the mountains, wet dots, and round boulders on mountain tops are elements of the southern landscape tradition.

Object facts

• Title: Buddhist Retreat by Stream and Mountains
• Date: 960–85
• Creator attribution: Juran (Chinese, active 960–985)
• Culture: China, Northern Song dynasty (960–1127)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on silk
• Dimensions: Painting only: 184.5 x 56.1 cm (72 5/8 x 22 1/16 in.); Overall with knobs: 260.5 x 77.4 cm (102 9/16 x 30 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1959.348

A detail from the museum

This hanging scroll with the towering mountain is a prime example of the monumental landscape style of Northern Song.

Collection credit

Gift of Katharine Holden Thayer

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sirén, Osvald. A History of Early Chinese Painting. London: Medici Society, 1933.
• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1954.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.