Streams and Mountains without End (1100–1150): Art, History and Details

Streams and Mountains without End (1100–1150) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Streams and Mountains without End was a landmark acquisition of 1953, made just a year after Sherman Lee had returned to Cleveland as curator of Oriental art. He acquired it with the intention to provide "a more than adequate foundation for a fine collection of Chinese landscape painting." This impressive work demonstrates the culmination of stylistic developments in Chinese monumental landscape painting following the Northern Song tradition. It represents a journey through a landscape, making it a fitting metaphor for Lee’s journey of discovery and achievement over a lifetime.

Object facts

• Title: Streams and Mountains without End
• Date: 1100–1150
• Culture: China, late Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) - Jin dynasty (1115-1234)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink and slight color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 35.1 x 213 cm (13 13/16 x 83 7/8 in.); Overall: 35.1 x 1103.8 cm (13 13/16 x 434 9/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1953.126

A detail from the museum

The portrayal of the distant lands is rich with details like pavilions, villages, and human activities.

Collection credit

Gift of the Hanna Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman. "Chinese Landscape Painting." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 41, no. 9 (November 1954): 199–201.
• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1954.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.