Minneapolis Institute of Art

Landscape after Solitary Fishing in a Ravine of Flowers by Wang Meng

Gion Nankai

Date

1749

Medium

Hanging scroll, ink and light color on paper

Department

Asian Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Mighty, gnarled pine trees command the lower half of this enormous landscape, the largest known painting by Gion Nankai, a pioneer of the Nanga movement in Japan. Beneath the trees is a cliffside path with a gate leading to a small hut tucked away in a grove of bamboo. We find the hut’s tenant in a covered boat on the river, being poled by a servant, offering us a viewpoint of and a pathway toward a dramatic landscape of precipitous cliffs, misty valleys, waterfalls, and distant layered peaks. In an inscription at upper right, Nankai describes his work as being based on Solitary Fishing in a Ravine of Flowers , a painting by one of China’s most revered scholar-painters, Wang Meng (1308–85). Nankai also took inspiration from Wang Wei (699–759), the ancient scholar, poet, and painter who was regarded in China, and later in Japan, as the forefather of Nanga. Asia

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