Free Spirits Among Streams and Mountains

When he painted this long handscroll in 1684, Wang Yuanqi [Wang Yüan-ch'i], the greatest orthodox master of the Qing [Ch'ing] dynasty, had not yet developed the style for which he is best remembered. Grounded in the lessons of his grandfather, the artist Wang Shimin [Wang Shih-min], he aimed in his own way to make a work both as weighty and as free as that which was regarded as the greatest of Chinese handscrolls: Huang Gongwang's [Huang Kung-wang's] Dwelling in the Fuchun [Fu-ch'un] Mountains of 1350.