“Residents on the Outskirts of the Capital”
In western art, landscapes weren’t really a respected art subject until the sixteenth century. This was not so in the east.
“Residents on the Outskirts of the Capital” is an ink on silk painting by the Chinese artist of the Southern school of landscape painting, Dong Yuan. It dates to sometime between circa 932 to circa 962, during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
In this piece, the landscape vantage point is overall sweeping views of mountains, trees, and a river running through. However, this landscape has a narrative. In very small details hard to discern at first, there are people, a bridge, buildings, and boats. In the lower left corner, there is a line of people between three boats sitting on the edge of the river. The people are holding hands while red flags fly proudly. The residents are likely celebrating a spring festival.
Above and on the right bank of the river, four structures are visible, and people are milling about. About halfway up, on the left part of the painting, people can be seen walking across a delicately arched bridge. On the right side of the painting at about the same height, you can see a structure with several people holding aloft what look like white ball lanterns. Further up the painting near the top of the landscape, three boats are on the water.
Yuan used several pigmented colors including green, blue, red, and white. This was a technique after the Chinese landscape artist, Li Sixun. Sixun was an artist from the seventh to eighth century who used minerals to add pigmentation to his art. He was known for his blue and green coloring. Using blues and greens to color the mountains, Yuan is emulating and paying homage to Sixun’s art.
Yuan was a master at landscape composition, and included a lot of space in his pieces, which have a flow and movement of their own. He typically depicted soft and lush hills with a waterway running through. Instead of strong contour lines, he used soft brushwork, gentle washes, and a more sophisticated perspective. His lines were muted, built up with gentle ink washes or rubbed to smudge the stronger lines. Using a hemp-fiber brush, he used his paint strokes to give texture and detail to vegetation and the mountain landscapes.
“Residents on the Outskirts of the Capital” is currently in the collections of the National Palace Museum in Taipei City in northern Taiwan.
For more on Dong Yuan, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
