Water Pavilion by Twin Pines

Guo Xi (Chinese, early 14th century)

Yuan or early Ming dynasty, 14th–15th century

Medium
Hanging scroll; ink and light colors on paper
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
100.3 × 35.5 cm (39 1/2 × 14 in.)
Culture
China
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
Credit line
Kate S. Buckingham Endowment Fund
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

This landscape was attributed to the Northern Song court painter Guo Xi (c. 1001-c. 1090) by the authors of early 20th-century colophons that accompany the painting. The depiction of figures gazing out from two water pavilions at the foot of a rocky outcrop—as well as a dramatic clusters of old pine-trees and billowing, restless forms of mountain-ridges that rise from valleys into the high distance—are all features associated with Guo Xi’s iconic landscapes. The relatively looser composition and hybrid brushwork, however, point to a Yuan re-interpretation of this Northern Song style. A seal on the painting that may be associated with a Yuan scholar named Wu Fang supports this fourteenth-century date.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0