HUANGSHAN / 黄山 PAINTED BY CHEN RUYAN / 陳汝言

CHEN RUYAN / 陳汝言 ( c. 1331-bef 1380)
Huangshan / 黄山 (1,864m - 6,115ft)
China

In Mountains of the Immortals, Handscroll, ink and color on silk, 33X97 cm. 

(Detail and full scroll )
The Cleveland Museum of Art

About the painting
This extraordinary painting reveals the intense desire by Yuan artists to capture and renew the flavor of past generations. The fantastic landscape is painted in the "blue and green" style associated with the Tang dynasty (618–907), a period of superb cultural achievement in China. Athough the intense mineral pigments have faded with the passage of time, the artist's vision of an imaginary land remains intact for the modern viewer.

The artist
There is no detailed biography that can define the dates of Chen Ruyan's birth and death. Only his works allow us to locate his period of activity which begins around 1340, and ends in 1380, possible date of its execution. The latter is in perfect contradiction with the inscription of Ni Zan situating his death in 1371.
Poet and painter, friend of the artist Wang Meng (painter), he held a post of provincial secretary in Shandong province at the beginning of the Ming dynasty. He makes landscapes in the style of Zhao Mengfu and characters in that of Ma Hozhi.
Chen Ruyan is part of the same circle of literate amateurs with his friends Ni Zan and Wang Meng and he also holds office in the short-lived government of Zhang Shicheng. He accepts a provincial post under the new Ming regime and suffers the same fate as the others, execution, for certain unspecified transgression. His Kingdoms of Immortals portable scroll probably dates from the time he was in the service of Zhang Shicheng; according to an inscription written by Ni Zan in 1371, in which he notes that by then the artist is already dead, the scroll is a birthday present for Mr. Pan, Zhang Shicheng's brother-in-law2.


The mountains
Huangshan - 黄山 is a mountain range in southern Anhui province in eastern China. Vegetation on the range is thickest below 1,100 meters -3,600 ft), with trees growing up to the treeline at 1,800 meters -5,900 ft). The Huangshan mountain range has many peaks, some more than 1,000 meters (3,250 feet) high. The three tallest and best-known peaks are Lotus Peak (Lian Hua Feng, 1,864 m), Bright Summit Peak (Guang Ming Ding, 1,840 m), and Celestial Peak (Tian Du Feng, literally Capital of Heaven Peak, 1,829 m).
The area is well known for its scenery, sunsets, peculiarly-shaped granite peaks, Huangshan pine trees, hot springs, winter snow, and views of the clouds from above. Much of Huangshan's reputation derives from its significance in Chinese arts and literature. In addition to inspiring poets such as Li Bai, Huangshan and the scenery therein has been the frequent subject of poetry and artwork, especially Chinese ink painting and, more recently, photography. Overall, from the Tang Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, more than 20,000 poems were written about Huangshan, and a school of painting named after it. The mountains also have appeared in modern works. James Cameron, director of the 2009 film Avatar, cited Huangshan as one of his influences in designing the fictional world of that film. The area also has been a location for scientific research because of its diversity of flora and wildlife. In the early part of the twentieth century, the geology and vegetation of Huangshan were the subjects of multiple studies by both Chinese and foreign scientists. The mountain is still a subject of research. For example, in the late twentieth century a team of researchers used the area for a field study of Tibetan macaques, a local species of monkey.
Huangshan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of China's major tourist destinations. The World Heritage Site covers a core area of 154 square kilometres and a buffer zone of 142 square kilometres. In 2002, Huangshan was named the "sister mountain" of Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps.

_______________________________

2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau