The Fuchun Mountians

Reading the handscroll from right to left, the viewer first encounters Wang Yuanqi’s inscription: ‘Modelled after [or in the style of, fang] the brush conception (biyi) of Huang Zijiu’s [Huang Gongwang] long handscroll The Fuchun Mountains, Wang Yuanqi.’

In the inscription at the end of the scroll, dated 1699, Wang Yuanqi says that he painted this handscroll on the request of his friend Huang Songyan, who admired the Song and Yuan masters. This work is modelled on the style of Huang Gongwang’s (1268–1354) Fuchun Mountains, a famous scroll once owned by Dong Qichang, which entered the Imperial collection in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–95) of the Qing dynasty and now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Taipei. The Fuchun Mountains are near Hangzhou in Zhejiang province.

This handscroll, painted when Wang was fifty-seven years old, belongs to his early style. It is a germination of creative ideas. The brushwork is spontaneous and animated, enriched with subtle tonal and textual gradations of ink. Its sketchiness, inspired by both Huang and Dong, has a childlike quality – an apparent awkwardness highly regarded by scholars as essential to the amateur ideal. According to Wang, fang, or ‘modelled after’ Huang Gongwang’s The Fuchun Mountains, does not mean a slavish kind of imitation such as copying accurately the superficial aspects of a painting. It means a creative kind of imitation in which the follower is inspired by the work of the ancient master to create a new individual style of painting.
Wang’s Fuchun Mountains are constructed from a system of semi-abstract forms, activated by dynamic rhythms expressing the creative energy of both artist and nature. These rhythms also evoke the aesthetic emotions analogous to those of music. This formal expression is greatly facilitated by the mobile and temporal character of the Chinese handscroll.

Text by Dr Mae Anna Pang © National Gallery of Victoria, Australia