# Quiet Life in a Wooded Glen 林麓幽居圖

- By: Wang Meng (Chinese, c. 1308-1385)
- Date: Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), dated 1361
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and light colors on paper
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 177.8 × 64.2 cm (70 × 25 1/4 in.)
- Culture: China
- Credit line: Kate S. Buckingham Endowment Fund
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/61483)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/c3137834-c062-1784-84f9-e2d6109b085f/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

This modest cottage nestled at the foot of towering mountains presents a quintessential image of academic retreat from the “dusty” world of material concerns and political instabilities. Its cultured occupant kneels on a platform and plays the zither (qin); a book lies open before him and young servants wait attentively nearby. The luxuriant setting of layered peaks and intertwined trees, as well as the dry, charcoal- like treatment of fibrous and dotted boulders, is imbued with a textural richness. This style is closely associated with Wang Meng, the last of the “Four Great Masters” of the Yuan dynasty.

Such a complex, kinetic composition reflects this artist's distinctive contribution to the literati's new use of painting as a vehicle for intellectual and emotional self-expression. This concept was largely kindled by social and political upheavals that accompanied the 14th-century Mongol conquest of China and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty. Wang Meng, who had served the Mongol government as a legal scribe, retired to a mountain hermitage in the turbulent final decades of Yuan rule. He may have executed this painting as a metaphorical self-portrait.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0