The 'living landscapes' of a Song Dynasty masterpiece

The towering mountains make up the bulk of the picture, creating an imposing effect. A waterfall as slender as silk falls from the heights above, breaking the silence of this dignified scene. Below the mountains are gentle slopes, gurgling rivers, and luxuriant trees. Not far away, a team of business merchants carrying cargo walks along the river. Like raindrops, huge stones are rendered with jagged outlines and filled with dabs of the brush. This technique was used in Chinese landscape painting to highlight the hardness of the rock and the eternal nature of the mountains, according to Fan Di'an, dean of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

According to Professor Wu Jian at Zhengzhou University, in Fan Kuan's early years he modeled the works of Jing Hao and Li Cheng. But later he realized that nature was the best teacher if he wanted to truly master the art of landscape painting. As such, he spent the rest of his life as a recluse living in the rugged mountains in Huayuan, Shanxi, devoting himself to observing nature. Fan finally developed his own landscape painting style – using bold brushwork as powerful as cast iron, which is well embodied in "Travelers Among Mountains and Streams."

According to Professor Kang Zhen of Beijing Normal University, Fan Kuan's landscape paintings are seldom merely representations of mountains and waters as they appear to the human eye. Instead, they are expressions of the mind and heart of the individual artist. By painting his human subjects at such a diminutive scale compared to the size of the mountains, Fan expressed his worldview that mankind only represents a tiny part of the vast cosmos. Also, human lives are relatively short, whereas mountains are static and eternal. With this work, Fan reached the peak of his landscape painting art, standing on the shoulders of past masters to blaze a new trail and leave an enduring legacy with his influence on Chinese art.