Grandeur, abundance, panache
Awe and pleasure – large landscapes (some in small formats)
Playful delight, quick-witted mixtures of observation, imagination, and gestures rifled from others' work. Here we have ample suggestion of the recollection of landscapes visited and enjoyed in cultured and well-provisioned company. And there is care to observation and professional skill - a bridge leading to a city is carefully rendered, a turn of a mountain path is made particular, a moment of illusory space feels as if it came from experience. There is also a handsome display of a good education, with references to masters his audience would recognize. And such ease in the brush, naturalness in the tempo, smoothness in the colours chosen.
This is YUN Shouping' s 惲壽平 (1633-1690) friend and more famous contemporary, WANG Hui 王翚 (1632-1717), moving towards his 'great synthesis' 大成, fusing Song composition with Yuan brushwork and a use of Tang references for the gravitas of age. In pursuing such a project Wang differed from his predecessor DONG Qichang 董其昌 (1555-1636) in giving attention to professional painting descending from the Song academicians. This shows in the polish and rich verisimilitude of his naturalistic representations.
However, like Dong, Wang's ambition was to develop a coherent individual manner, yielding works that were neither copies nor pastiches of the past. A close parallel in Europe would be those Roman, Renaissance or Neo-Classical painters who made a close study of archeological finds and applied their discoveries to original masterpieces.
The virtuosity of the work exudes confidence and invention, the gestures exaggerated for pleasing effect. This is a kind of painting to give pleasure to many viewers, quickly - and so it is no surprise that Wang Hui was eagerly collected and has been long-loved.
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| Wang Hui 王翚 (1632-1717) Landscape after Zhao Mengfu (dated 1681) (details) Handscroll, ink and colour on paper 29 x 1006 cm Private collection |