River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day (c. 1624–27): Art, History and Details

River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day (c. 1624–27) 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 had a tremendous impact on the artistic practices and historiography of later generations; his works and writings shaped literati aesthetics. Here, Dong places an abstract landscape composition diagonally across the picture plane, configured to recall earlier masters and simultaneously express his own personal style. Dong’s inscription claims, Huang Gongwang’s Autumn Day, looks like this. I truly regret the master has not seen my work. In fact, Dong Qichang may have had Dong Yuan’s Xiao and Xiang Rivers in mind, a work he owned and considered a key work in Chinese art history.

Object facts

• Title: River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day
• Date: c. 1624–27
• Creator attribution: Dong Qichang (Chinese, 1555–1636)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Handscroll; ink on Korean paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 38 x 136.8 cm (14 15/16 x 53 7/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1959.46

A detail from the museum

The painting has an imprint of a Korean seal that reads "Seal of the king of Joseon."

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Goepper, Roger. 1000 Jahre chinesische Malerei. München: Haus der Kunst, 1959.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Cahill, James, and Virginia Field. Fantastics and Eccentrics in Chinese Painting. [New York]: Asia Society; distributed by Abrams, 1967.

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.