Cleveland Museum of Art

Cloudy Mountains

Mi Youren

Date

1130

Medium

Handscroll; ink and color on silk

Culture

China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Cloudy Mountains captures the view of a lush and misty riverscape, an impression of Mi Youren’s new environment, painted in a moment of peace. With the fall of the Northern Song dynasty in 1127 upon the Jurchen’s military invasion, Mi Youren fled south across the Yangzi River. In 1130, he had reached Xinchang in Zhejiang province and thanked his host with this painting for having given him shelter. Mi Youren was the oldest son of the art critic Mi Fu (1051– 1107); both developed a distinct style of mountain scenery by accumulating wet ink dots that create a hazy atmosphere. This scroll is one of the museum’s earliest dated Chinese paintings.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.