A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains
Wang Xi, 1113
The only surviving work by Wang Ximeng, a young painter at the court of the Northern Song, who completed it at just eighteen in 1113, during the reign of Emperor Huizong. This long horizontal silk scroll unfolds a river and mountain landscape painted in blue and green mineral pigments, azurite and malachite, following a tradition associated with the Sui and Tang dynasties. Although it draws on the colours and meticulous lines of those earlier centuries, its composition, with mountains left unoutlined and forms modelled by light, reflects Song sensibility. The scenery has been identified with Mount Lu and Poyang Lake. Travellers on foot, on horseback and in boats move through the landscape, offering a quiet glimpse of life in the territory. The work is valued both for its technique and for its history: it was admired from the Yuan period onward, passed through several imperial collections, and entered the Palace Museum in Beijing in 1953.
- Painter
- Wang Xi
- Date
- 1113
- Medium
- silk
- Dimensions
- 51 × 1192 cm
- Museum
- The Palace Museum, Beijing
- Genre
- ink and color painting, blue-green shan shui