Tall Bamboo and Distant Mountains, after Wang Meng (1694): Art, History and Details

Tall Bamboo and Distant Mountains, after Wang Meng (1694) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Wang Hui (Chinese, 1632–1717).

The work and its context

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

Wang Hui studied paintings by earlier masters and digested their styles with unceasing virtuosity. He had such enduring affection for a landscape by Wang Meng 王蒙 (about 1308–85) that between 1686 and 1712, he made several copies, like this example. One of his compositional transformations here was moving the scholar from the pavilion directly into the landscape by the stream. His faithful copying also included inscriptions. Wang Meng had written that he was trying to resuscitate the style of an earlier artist, Wen Tong (1018–1079); therefore, Wang Hui sought to revive both Wang Meng and Wen Tong.

Object facts

• Title: Tall Bamboo and Distant Mountains, after Wang Meng
• Date: 1694
• Creator attribution: Wang Hui (Chinese, 1632–1717)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 79.6 x 39.4 cm (31 5/16 x 15 1/2 in.); Overall with knobs: 215.8 x 61.6 cm (84 15/16 x 24 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1953.629

A detail from the museum

As a leading figure in the Orthodox School of Chinese painting, Wang Hui believed that the act of painting was a dialogue with one or more masters of the past.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Pang, Yuanji 龐元濟. Xu zhai ming hua lu (16 juan) [虛齋名畫錄 (16卷) = Catalogue of paintings in the collection of the author]. Shanghai: Xuantong ji you, 1909.
• Pang, Yuanji 龐元濟 and Binglü Pang 龐氷履. Ming bi ji sheng [名筆集勝 = Illustrated catalogue of Chinese paintings in the author's collection]. Shanghai: Mo yuan tang, 1940.
• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1954.

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.