WANG YUANQUI (1642-1715)
Danxia Shan (2,142 m -7,028 ft)
China
China
In Danxia Shan, 1699, ink on roll, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
The mountain
Danxia Shan / 丹霞山 (2,142 m -7,028 ft), which mean Mount Danxia, is a noted scenic mountainous area near Shaoguan city in the northern part of Guangdong, People's Republic of China. It is described on the local signage as a "world famous UNESCO geopark of China". The Danxia area is formed from a reddish sandstone which has been eroded over time into a series of outcrops surrounded by spectacular cliffs and many unusual rock formations known as Danxia landform. There are a number of temples located on the mountains and many scenic walks can be undertaken. There is also a river winding through the mountains on which boat trips can be taken.
Among other attractions that make the Danxia range interesting, the area has the following characteristic stone formations:
Yang Yuan Stone, (Yangyuan "male/father stone") bearing a remarkable resemblance to a phallus
Yin Yuan Stone or Yinyuan hole, which somewhat resembles the female vulva. Breasts Stone, human breast-shaped rocky outcrops on a cliff hanging 30 m above the ground. Sleeping Beauty, a rocky range resembling a sleeping maiden.
In the 2010 UNESCO list of world heritage sites, Mount Danxia was recorded as a natural World Heritage Site as part of China's Danxia landform.
Wang Yuanqi / 王原祁 was a Chinese painter of the Qing dynasty. Wang was born in Taicang in the Jiangsu province and tutored in painting by his grandfather Wang Shimin (1592–1680). His style name was ' Mao-ching ' and his sobriquet was ' Lu-t'ai '. Wang is a member of the Six Masters of the early Qing period, also known as the 'Four Wangs, a Wu and a Yun'. They are also often regarded as the principal figures of the 'Orthodox School' of Chinese landscape painting.
Wang Yuanqi was two years old when the New Qing Dynasty was founded (1644). He rose to prominence as a court official and eventually was appointed curator of the imperial collection during the reign of the Qing Emperor Kangxi. He remained a court official throughout his long career and died at age 73 in 1715.
His landscapes followed the model of the Yuan Dynasty artists who broke away from the Northern Song tradition of rendering landscapes "real enough to walk through" to more personal abstractions. His style and technique demonstrates influences from, for example, the artist Huang Gongwang, especially in the use of dry brush strokes and ink washes and his use of colour, often making "colour patterns a component of his dense compositional structure, complementing the force of abstract design with the rhythmic flow of colour." His 1711 ink and color-on-silk painting, Landscape in the Style of Huang Gongwang, is in Singapore's Asian Civilisations Museum collection and his version of Wang Wei's (now lost) eighth century hand scroll, The Wang River Villa, also painted in 1711, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
