Scenery of Lantau Island

Pang Chap-ming graduated from the Shanghai Art Academy and then stayed in Shanghai where he got to see many art treasures in private collection. During the early years of the Republic of China, Chinese ink artists were encouraged to travel and to observe nature, and Pang travelled widely across the country and saw with his own eyes the renowned sceneries of Wu Waterfalls, Mount Tiantai, Mount Yandang, and Mount Huang. During the Sino-Japanese War, he travelled to the Three Gorges, Mount Emei, and Mount Qingcheng. Pang moved to Hong Kong in 1950, and started to visit various scenic spots in the city. Excelling in landscape painting, Pang emphasized the equal importance of learning from old masters and from nature, and often painted what he saw. These two paintings titled Scenery of Lantau Island show that Peng had put into practice his ideal of learning from both nature and old masters. Motif of an actual scenery was represented in traditional techniques. Pang had visited Lantau and Kei Kung Shan, and he observed that the textures of rocks and vegetation of these two hills resemble Dong Yuan’s Summer Mountains and Residents on the Outskirts of the Capital. Pang was an expert on theories and history of Chinese ink painting. He pointed out that the mountain and rock strokes of old masters Dong Yuan and Juran are “strokes of earth,” which consist of mainly hempfiber strokes. These two paintings are Pang’s interpretation of the tradition of Dong Yuan and Juran. The artist made good use of both realist and symbolic brushwork, and both thick and light ink. Hemp-fiber strokes are used to present sceneries of Lantau where mountains and rich foliage float in the mist, as if it were the classical landscape of the south of Yangtze River. The emphasis of this work is not realistic representation, but is rather a dialogue with old masters through landscape, and to re-interpret the tradition of Dong Yuan and Juran through actual sceneries.