Yuan Jiang 袁江 (Chinese, active 1688–1746)
Viewing Plum Blossoms with Warm Wine 溫酒賞梅圖
INV-5098
Yuan Jiang 袁江 (Chinese, active 1688–1746)Qing dynasty (1644–1911), 1717
Viewing Plum Blossoms with Warm Wine 溫酒賞梅圖
Yuan Jiang 袁江 (Chinese, active 1688–1746) →Chinese (culture or style)hanging scrollpainting
Date
Qing dynasty (1644–1911), 1717
Medium
Hanging scroll; ink and slight color on silk
Dimensions
165 × 99 cm (65 × 39 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Naomi Donnelley
Yuan Jiang is most renowned for his meticulous “ruled-line painting” (jiehua) of architecture—the only pictorial style to utilize carpentry tools along with the flexible brush. A master of composition as well as draftsmanship, Yuan seamlessly constructed buildings within landscapes of imposing grandeur and unexpected drama. This aristocratic villa and its surrounding garden of large, diagonally swept trees and huge, eroded rocks lies beneath distant mountain ranges that emerge and recede above a thick mist. Within this animated and dreamlike setting, figures in the foreground library, on the veranda, and in the surrounding garden appear isolated in their own tranquility. Such strikingly panoramic but personally accessible images were typically commissioned by affluent individuals of late imperial China for display in the spacious reception halls of their private mansions.
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