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Lot Essay
Jingangpo Landscape series is a milestone and the first pinnacle in Fu Baoshi’s art career. In the Preface for Renwu Painting Exhibition, the artist writes: “Within the tens-li radius around Jingangpo, there are countless beautiful sceneries. The grass and trees, hills and gullies, are all ideal subjects for painters to sketch from. The shrouding mist, blocking fog and the boundless, magnificent landscapes they create is beyond the perception and imagination of a south-eastern dweller.”
The present work, with an expansive vertical format, is of profound significance. The composition has a sense of monumentality similar to the grand and immense landscape painting established in the Northern Song. The artist depicts the mountain peak covered by greenery with relaxed and dynamic strokes, which consists two-thirds of the painting. Here Fu emphasizes the momentum and is not concerned about the details. The waterfall directs the eye to the lower part of the painting where the mountainside and mountain foot are located, and the scene becomes more complex. Towers and pavilions spread along the mountainside while streams run above and underneath the bushes. Under the gigantic tree crown, two scholars are in conversation. While they are at the bottom of the composition, they are the focal point of the work.
Fu Baoshi is meticulous regarding composition. Everything in the painting corresponds to another—mountain peak and mountain foot, the organic and the man-built, nature and humanity, imagination and reality. The consequent landscape is simultaneously unrestrained and precisely arranged, manifesting the skills and capability of the artist.
The present work, with an expansive vertical format, is of profound significance. The composition has a sense of monumentality similar to the grand and immense landscape painting established in the Northern Song. The artist depicts the mountain peak covered by greenery with relaxed and dynamic strokes, which consists two-thirds of the painting. Here Fu emphasizes the momentum and is not concerned about the details. The waterfall directs the eye to the lower part of the painting where the mountainside and mountain foot are located, and the scene becomes more complex. Towers and pavilions spread along the mountainside while streams run above and underneath the bushes. Under the gigantic tree crown, two scholars are in conversation. While they are at the bottom of the composition, they are the focal point of the work.
Fu Baoshi is meticulous regarding composition. Everything in the painting corresponds to another—mountain peak and mountain foot, the organic and the man-built, nature and humanity, imagination and reality. The consequent landscape is simultaneously unrestrained and precisely arranged, manifesting the skills and capability of the artist.