Mt. Qingbian (1617): Art, History and Details

Mt. Qingbian (1617) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Dong Qichang (Chinese, 1555–1636).

The work and its context

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

Dong Qichang radically transforms the landscape composition into a purely abstract design. He organizes the mountain forms to achieve an overall sense of structure, activating the flow of energy (qi) and the momentum of force (shi) throughout the pictorial design. In his art, brush and ink assume life independent of the depicted forms, so that the painting can be appreciated for “the sheer marvels of brush and ink.”

Object facts

• Title: Mt. Qingbian
• Date: 1617
• Creator attribution: Dong Qichang (Chinese, 1555–1636)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 225 x 67.6 cm (88 9/16 x 26 5/8 in.); Overall: 355 x 92.7 cm (139 3/4 x 36 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1980.10

A detail from the museum

Dong Qichang had visited the Bian Mountains, which are part of a low range located not far from Wuxing and Lake Tai in the southern province of Zhejiang.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sirén, Osvald. Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles. New York: Ronald Press, 1956.
• Qin, Zuyong, and Roger Goepper. Im Schatten Des Wu-T'ung-Baumes: [Gedanken Zur Malerei Von Ch'in Tsu-Yung]. Munchen: Hirmer, 1959.
• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962.

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.