Guo Xi
Landscape theorist at the Song court.
Guo Xi was a court painter who wrote a famous text on landscape painting with three perspectives: high, deep and level. Early Spring of 1072 is his masterpiece.
Guo Xi was born around 1020 in Wenxian in present-day Henan province and died around 1090. He became the leading court painter under Emperor Shenzong of the Northern Song dynasty and painted murals and screens in imperial buildings. He built on the style of Li Cheng, with bare, crooked trees and misty mountains.
His masterpiece is Early Spring of 1072, a hanging scroll in ink and light colour on silk in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. A mountain twists upwards through mist in soft, rounded forms. The trees have branches like crab claws. Waterfalls, paths, temples and small figures appear here and there. The picture captures the mood as winter begins to give way, and the eye can wander through the landscape in different directions.
Guo Xi is also known for the text The Lofty Message of Forests and Streams, which his son Guo Si compiled from his ideas. In it he writes that a good landscape should be one in which you want to wander and even live. He describes three ways of seeing mountains: from below looking up, into the depths, and out across the distance. The text is one of the most important in Chinese art theory.
After Shenzong's death his style fell out of fashion. According to a later story, his paintings were used as dusters at court under Emperor Huizong, but that is an anecdote. His influence was nonetheless great, both through his pictures and through his text, and under the Yuan dynasty his style was revived among the scholar painters.