Fan Kuan
Master of the monumental landscape.
Fan Kuan lived as a hermit in the mountains and painted vast, vertical landscapes. Travellers among Mountains and Streams is regarded as one of the greatest works of Chinese art.
Fan Kuan was born around 950 in Huayuan in present-day Shaanxi province and died around 1030. His real name was Fan Zhongzheng. Kuan means roughly “generous” or “broad” and was a nickname referring to his free and magnanimous manner. He lived at the beginning of the Northern Song dynasty, when monumental landscape painting reached its peak.
According to the sources he first studied the painter Li Cheng but realised that it was better to learn from nature than from other people. He withdrew to the Zhongnan and Taihua mountains, where he lived as a hermit and observed the landscape in all weathers and seasons. He is said to have been fond of wine and unconcerned with convention.
His masterpiece is Travellers among Mountains and Streams, a hanging scroll on silk more than two metres high. It is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. In the centre rises an enormous mountain that almost fills the picture. A narrow waterfall drops down the cliff. At the very bottom, almost invisible, a few small travellers walk with donkeys. Human smallness in the face of nature is plain to see. In 1958 a scholar discovered Fan Kuan's signature hidden among the leaves in the lower corner of the picture.
Fan Kuan built up the surface of the mountains with thousands of small dots and short strokes, so-called raindrop texture strokes, which give the rock weight and grain. The composition is clearly divided into foreground, middle ground and background. Travellers among Mountains and Streams is regarded as one of the most important works in the history of Chinese art and has influenced landscape painting for a thousand years.