Riverside Pavilion and Mountain Hues

Ni Zan excelled at landscape and ink bamboo painting, his calligraphy also pure and marvelous. He is ranked along with Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, and Wang Meng as one of the Four Yuan Masters. This painting from the year 1372 is inscribed with poetry that Ni Zan wrote himself. Done for his friend Huanbo, it is a typical example of the Three Perfections of painting, poetry, and calligraphy in a single work and a literati painting for a friend in the know. The composition here is more complex than in Ni's earlier works, skillfully intersecting the slopes and branches to lead the viewer's eye into the remote distance for a sense of desolation in autumn woods. Despite the independent appearance of dots, washes, texturing, and brush scrubbing on the paper, all come together as a cohesive whole. Complemented by dry ink and desiccated textures using a slanted brush, it creates for an atmosphere of clarity, brittleness, desolation, and high antiquity--a reflection almost of Ni Zan's own obsession with cleanliness. Pouring forth with ease, these qualities form a marvelous truth that make this a masterpiece of Ni's late years.