Travellers among Mountains and Streams
A colossal mountain towers up, and at the very bottom a small caravan makes its way. The picture is one of the most admired works of Chinese art.
Find the travellers – they are almost impossible to see. Humankind is small in nature.
Fan Kuan was active around the year 1000, under the Northern Song dynasty. Very little is known about his life. According to later sources, he was an eccentric who withdrew to the mountains to study nature directly rather than copy the old masters. Travellers among Mountains and Streams is the only work attributed to him with any great certainty. It belongs to the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
The picture is a hanging scroll, about two metres high and one metre wide. It is dominated by a colossal mountain that rises in the centre and fills almost two-thirds of the picture. A narrow waterfall drops down the right side of the mountain. In the foreground are large boulders and trees. At the bottom right a small caravan of mules and people makes its way. Among the trees on a cliff to the right, the roofs of a temple can be glimpsed.
The composition is divided into three zones: the foreground with rocks and the road, the middle ground with trees and mist, and the background with the towering mountain. The mist between the middle ground and the mountain makes the mountain seem to float and to be very far away, while at the same time looming directly in front of the viewer. The travellers are tiny, showing humankind’s place in the vast landscape.
Fan Kuan painted in ink and light colour on silk. The surface of the mountain is built up of thousands of small, short brushstrokes, sometimes called raindrop strokes, which convey the texture of rock. The outlines are strong, and the dark areas create depth. The silk has darkened with time, so that the picture now looks browner than it originally did.
The picture has been interpreted in the light of Chinese philosophy. The landscape was understood as an image of the order of the cosmos, in which the mountain could stand for something great and unchanging. The monumental landscape painting of the Northern Song expressed the ideal that human beings should live in harmony with nature.
For many years it was uncertain whether the painting was really by Fan Kuan. In 1958 a scholar found his signature hidden among the leaves in the lower right corner, which strengthened the attribution. The painting bears the seals of many collectors and a later inscription by the artist Dong Qichang. It was part of the imperial collections and was taken to Taiwan in connection with the civil war in the late 1940s.
Travellers among Mountains and Streams is regarded as one of the supreme works of Chinese landscape painting. It has influenced generations of painters. Because the silk is fragile, it is shown only for short periods. It has become a symbol of the monumental landscape tradition.