Mt. Taibo in the Style of Wang Meng (1442): Art, History and Details

Mt. Taibo in the Style of Wang Meng (1442) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Du Qiong (Chinese, 1396–1474).

The work and its context

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

When a Chinese painter "imitated" a painting by a past master, the intention was never to produce an exact copy. Du Qiong, the Ming painter from Suzhou, is a case in point. The painting style of this handscroll is actually closer to that of Huang Gongwang (1269–1354) than to the style of Wang Meng (about 1301–1385). Both masters were active during the previous dynasty and are among the so-called Four Great Masters of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). In this painting, the interplay of styles, including Du Qiong's own, contribute to an inner dimension that is more than visual. Mt. Taibo is located in the province of Zhejiang and is known for its scenic beauty. In this scroll, however, it is not depicted literally. The image is an ideal representation of mountains in southeastern China.

Object facts

• Title: Mt. Taibo in the Style of Wang Meng
• Date: 1442
• Creator attribution: Du Qiong (Chinese, 1396–1474)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 29.8 x 527.1 cm (11 3/4 x 207 1/2 in.); Overall: 30.6 x 976.7 cm (12 1/16 x 384 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1968.195

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Mingyi, Gao. "The Evolution of Wang Wei's Landscape Images from Dong Qichang's Study of Wang Wei's Snow." The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly 42, n. 3 (March 2025): 99–141.

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.