Title:
The Wang-Ch'uan Villa (in the manner of Wang Wei (699-759))
Creator:
Chang Chi-su (Zhang Jisu)
Subject:
Chinese Paintings
Landscape Paintings
Description:
Chang Chi-su worked outside of the mainstream of seventeenth-century painting and was less susceptible to the critical currents
of the Sung-chiang area. He was from P'u-chou, present-day Yung-chi in Shansi province. Chang's work carries the flavor of
the Nanking school painters like Wu Pin. In this handscroll we also see some signs of Western influences in his style.
"Chang Chi-su apparently at some point in his career had been able to see and study what he took to be the original of Wang
Wei's famous scroll of the Wang-Ch'uan Villa. Wang Wei was an eighth-century poet painter, later hailed as the forefather
of literati amateur/scholar painters. Wang Wei [in his famous scroll] had painted the surroundings of his villa, the Wang-ch'uan
River. Originally on the walls of his villa, the composition came down through the centuries in various ways. A version of
it surfaced in the late Ming and was taken by some people to be the original - it was engraved in stone and so forth. So Chang
Chi-su was able to see this and he did various versions of it. I think five of them exist, four plus this one."
Publisher:
Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
Date:
17 century A.D.
Type:
image
Format:
Painting
Handscroll: ink on silk
China
h 12 -5/16 x w 153 -1/4 inches
Identifier:
2002.2.2
Coverage:
China