Summer Mountains (after Dong Yuan [active c. 937–75]) (1290–1354): Art, History and Details

Summer Mountains (after Dong Yuan [active c. 937–75]) (1290–1354) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Huang Gongwang (Chinese, 1269–1354).

The work and its context

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

This monumental landscape is drawn in softly rounded strokes with darker lines frequently applied on top of lighter ones. This technique recalls one of the suggestions included in a collection of the artist's writings known as Secrets of Landscape Painting: The most difficult thing in painting is using the ink. The artist begins by using dilute ink and builds it up to the point where it begins to look right, then uses dense, black ink, applied fairly dry, and washes of deeper-toned ink. This technique distinguishes the fields from the paths, the far from the near. Huang Gongwang may have learned this technique from observing nature through the eyes of an earlier master, Dong Yuan, a painter whose style he shared.

Object facts

• Title: Summer Mountains (after Dong Yuan [active c. 937–75])
• Date: 1290–1354
• Creator attribution: Huang Gongwang (Chinese, 1269–1354)
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and slight color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 131.7 x 55.6 cm (51 7/8 x 21 7/8 in.); Overall: 257.4 x 71.2 cm (101 5/16 x 28 1/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1992.1

A detail from the museum

The wet hills and moist, rich atmosphere evoke the southern Chinese summer, characterized by monsoon rains and lush growth.

Collection credit

Cornelia Blakemore Warner Bequest, by exchange, and Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1992." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• "1993 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.
• Wilson, J. Keith, and Anne E. Wardwell. "New Objects/New Insights: Cleveland's Recent Chinese Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 8 (October 1994): 270–347.

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.