TAISHAN / 泰山 PAINTED BY WANG HUI / 王翬

WANG HUI  / 王翬(1632-1717)
Taishan /泰山 (1,533m - 5,029ft)

China 

 In The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Tour, Scroll 3, 1698. The MET, New York 

The mountain 

Taishan /泰山  or Mount Tai  (1,533m - 5,029ft)  is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai'an, in Shandong province, China. The tallest peak is the Jade Emperor Peak (玉皇頂). Mount Tai is of key importance in Chinese religion, being the eastern one of the Sacred Mountains of China. It is associated with sunrise, birth, and renewal, and is often regarded the foremost of the five. According to historical records, Mount Tai became a sacred place haunted by emperors to offer sacrifices and meditate in the Zhou Dynasty before 1,000 BC. A total of 72 emperors were recorded as visiting it. Writers also came to acquire inspiration, to compose poems, write essays, paint and take pictures. Hence, a great many cultural relics were left on the mountain.
Mount Tai is a tilted fault-block mountain with height increasing from the north to the south. It is the oldest example of a paleo-metamorphic formation from the Cambrian Period in eastern China. Known as the Taishan Complex, this formation contains magnetized, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock as well as intrusions of other origins during the Archean Era. The uplift of the region started in the Proterozoic Era; by the end of the Proterozoic, it had become part of the continent. Besides the Jade Emperor Peak, other distinctive rock formations are the Heaven Candle Peak, the Fan Cliff, and the Rear Rock Basin.
Visitors can reach the peak of Mount Tai via a bus which terminates at the Midway Gate to Heaven, from there a cable car connects to the summit. Covering the same distance on foot takes from two and a half to six hours.
To climb up the mountain, one can take one of two routes. The more popular east route starts from Taishan Arch. On the way up the 7,200 stone steps, the climber first passes the Ten Thousand Immortals Tower (Wanxianlou), Arhat Cliff (Luohanya), and Palace to Goddess Dou Mu (Doumugong). The climbing from the First Gate to Heaven, the main entrance bordering on Tai'an town, up the entire mountain can take two and a half hours for the sprinting hiker to six hours for the leisure pace.

The artist
Wang Hui / 王翬 was a Chinese landscape painter, one of the Four Wangs. He, and the three other Wangs, dominated orthodox art in China throughout the late Ming and early Qing periods. Of the Four Wangs, Wang Hui is considered the best-known today.
Wang Hui followed in the footprints of his great grandfathers, grandfather, father and uncles and learned painting at a very early age. He was later taught by two contemporary masters, Zhang Ke and Wang Shimin, who taught him to work in the tradition of copying famous Chinese paintings. Along with the other Wangs, Wang Hui helped to perpetuate the tradition of copying the ancient masters rather than creating original work.
Notice about the scroll above:
In 1689 the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662 – 1722), a Manchu whose forebears had conquered China in 1644, made a grand tour to consolidate his authority over southern China. The renowned landscapist Wang Hui was commissioned to record the journey in a series of twelve oversize handscrolls. This scroll, the third in the set, highlights the emperor’s visit to Mount Tai, China’s “Sacred Peak of the East.” Although Wang based his design on maps and woodblock prints — he never visited the mountain — he also connected specific sites with imaginary landscape passages inspired by classical precedents and employed a traditional “blue-and-green” palette to underscore the emperor’s beneficent rule.
Source:
 -  Wang Hui in the MET collections