Dense Green Covering the Spring Mountains

This painting of quiet and lush hills was by Dai Jin who was the leader of Zhe school in the beginning of Ming Dynasty. Dai Jin’s landscape paintings can be traced back to the academic painting tradition in Southern Song Dynasty, and this tendency is clearly reflected in this painting. The screen is divided into three levels, with white clouds as divisions, presenting a sense of space which is the difference between Chinese and western paintings. In the front, there is a literati walking with a crutch under the pine trees among the rocks, and a young servant holding a piano follows him; in the middle, there are looming pavilions and wooden houses hidden in the mountains; in the prospect, lofty mountains stand high. The three-section composition adopts corner type composition which painters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui in Southern Song Dynasty were adept at, but the whole painting was complete. In the three sections, the ink is distinguished but echoes each other, and the shades vary properly, creating an atmosphere of lush and distant spring hill. This paining was marked with the year of creation, which is rare in Dai Jin’s works. It was once collected by Liu Shu in Qing Dynasty and Pang Yuanji in modern times. As it was handed down clearly and has accurate time of creation, it becomes a reliable work in the research of Dai Jin’s paintings.