River and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day

From the archive

Dong Qichang had a tremendous impact on the artistic practices and historiography of later generations; his works and writings shaped literati aesthetics. Here, Dong places an abstract landscape composition diagonally across the picture plane, configured to recall earlier masters and simultaneously express his own personal style. Dong’s inscription claims, Huang Gongwang’s Autumn Day, looks like this. I truly regret the master has not seen my work . In fact, Dong Qichang may have had Dong Yuan’s Xiao and Xiang Rivers in mind, a work he owned and considered a key work in Chinese art history.