Constellation Sea I: the Heavenly Yellow River

At a time when many of his contemporaries employed only ink and rice paper to reflect the traditions of the classical past, Liu Kuo-sung revolutionised his landscape works with vibrant colours and new techniques. While traditional Chinese landscape painting translates literally as ‘mountain and water painting’, great emphasis is placed on the rendering of the mountains, with water seldom depicted in detail and often left as a blank space. Liu’s works, however, show a clear preoccupation with both water and mountain, inspired particularly by his travels to Tibet and the beautiful lakes of Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan.

Liu’s fascination with water led the artist to work over the course of two decades on a technique to capture the ever-changing and ethereal nature of the element. Constellation Sea I: the Heavenly Yellow River is a fine example of Liu’s steeped ink series, in which he renders the surface of a body of water at different times of the year. Liu first applies ink and watercolour to moist tracing paper, before placing another sheet of tracing paper on top. He then sweeps the composition with a broad brush, leaving unpredictable horizontal patterns as the two sheets are separated from one another. By conveying the diverse energy of water and the environment reflected upon it, Liu shifts this often-neglected element to the centrepiece of Chinese landscape painting, altering the relationship between mountain and water in this traditional genre.