From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Fan Kuan
Fan Kuan
Fan Kuan Fan Kuan (Chinese: 范寬; pinyin: Fàn Kuān Wade–Giles:
Kuān;
Fan K’uan (fl. 990–1020)[1] was a Chinese landscape
K’uan)
painter of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) considered
among the great masters of the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies. Almost no biographical details survive about him.
He modeled his early work after that of the artist Li
Cheng (919–967), but later he concluded that nature was
the only true teacher. He spent the rest of his life as
a recluse in the rugged Qiantang mountains of Shanxi.
Besides his admiration and love for the mountain’s of
northern China little else is known of his life.[citation need-
ed]
Travelers among Mountains and Streams, a large hanging
scroll, is Fan Kuan’s best known work and a seminal
painting of the Northern Song school. It establishes an
ideal in monumental landscape painting to which later
painters were to return time and again for inspiration.[3]
Fan Kuan based the painting on the Taoist principle of
reclusion, the composition emphasizes the monumen-
tality of nature. A packhorse train can barely be seen
emerging from a wood at the base of a huge precipice.
Despite the fact that the painting represents an ideal
example of the achievements of the Northern Song land-
scape styles, the painting still represents several archaic
conventions dating back to the Tang Dynasty. The com-
position remains dominated by a central massif. The fo-
liage are composed of mechanically repeated and narrow
texture strokes.[4]
The historian Patricia Ebrey explains her view on the
painting that the:
...foreground, presented at eye level, is executed in
crisp, well-defined brush strokes. Jutting boulders,
tough scrub trees, a mule train on the road, and a
temple in the forest on the cliff are all vividly de-
picted. There is a suitable break between the fore-
ground and the towering central peak behind,
Travellers among Mountains and Streams (谿山行旅), ink and
which is treated as if it were a backdrop, suspended
slight color on silk, dimensions of 6¾ ft x 2½ ft.[1] National and fitted into a slot behind the foreground. There
Palace Museum, Taipei[2] are human figures in this scene, but it is easy to
imagine them overpowered by the magnitude and
Born fl. 990
mystery of their surroundings.[5]
Died 1020
Fan Kuan was listed as the 59th of the 100 most important
Nationality Chinese
people of the last millennium by Life magazine.[citation
Field Painting needed] Fan’s masterpiece Travellers among Mountains and
Streams bears a lost half-hidden signature rediscovered
Movement Sung Dynasty, Northern Landscape style
only in 1958.[6]
Influenced by Li Cheng
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Fan Kuan
• History of Chinese art
Notes
[1] ^ Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 162.
[2] Liu, 50.
[3] Sullivan, The Arts of China, 179.
[4] Sullivan, The Arts of China, 180.
[5] Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 162–163.
[6] Sullivan, The Arts of China, 180.
References
• Liu, Pingheng (1989). Shui mo yin yun, qi yun sheng
dong de Zhongguo hui hua (水墨絪縕, 氣韻生動的
中國繪畫) = Misty and Lively Chinese Painting.
Taibei Shi: Guo li li shi bo wu guan (國立歷史博物
館).
• Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. The Cambridge Illustrated
History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
External links
Travellers among Mountains and Streams, detail. • Painting Gallery of Fan Kuan at China Online
Museum
See also • Other paintings by Fan Kuan at the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston
• Culture of the Song Dynasty • Fan Kuan, A Bilingual Study of His Life & Works
• Chinese Painting (English & Chinese)
• Chinese art
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fan_Kuan&oldid=471355500"
Categories:
• 1020 deaths
• Song Dynasty painters
• Chinese landscape painters
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