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A painting of fine and happy four seasons
(Xi shi jia xing tu 四 時 佳 興 圖)
1527
- Medium
- ink and colour on paper
- Measurements
- 20.0 × 315.2 cm (image)
- Place/s of Execution
- China
- Inscription
- inscribed in ink (in image) u.l.: 四 時佳興圗 / 丁亥冬月 文嘉 冩
stamped in red ink (in zhuanshu seal script) (in image) c.l.:
stamped in red ink (in zhuanshu seal script) (in image) c.l.:
stamped in red ink (in zhuanshu seal script) (in image) c.l.: - Accession Number
- 1707-D4
- Department
- Asian Art
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1956
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Gordon Darling Foundation - Gallery location
- Not on display
- Physical description
- The handscroll depicts a landscape of mountains and streams of the four seasons. Read from right to left, the landscape moves from spring to winter and is concluded with the inscription by the artist WEN Jia and his seals. The mountains are painted in the tradition of blue and green landscapes which began in the Tang dynasty (618-906) and then white to portray snow in a winter landscape. The landscape is a scholar’s retreat in nature. It beings with pavilion, fisherman’s boat in spring; continues with misty clouds, houses with figures sitting next to open windows on stilts in summer; streams and trees with red leaves, pavilion in misty clouds in autumn; and finally houses, pagoda, bridge and mountains covered with snow represented by the blank areas of the white paper in winter. The landscape is thus punctuated by scholar’s retreats. The painting is very beautiful and the landscape is peaceful and calm. A great deal of attention is paid to details. It is certainly a painting for relaxation and contemplation. However, it is not as scholarly, refined and austere as the paintings by WEN Jia. In a way the painting resembles the style of QIU Ying 仇英 (c. 1494-1552), who was a WEN Jia’s contemporary of the Wu school of painting and who specialized in the gongbi (工筆, meticulous) brush technique and QIU’s paintings tend to be more decorative. The landscape painting is followed by colophons on the painting written in Chinese calligraphy. The second and last one is by WEI Zhihuang 魏之璜（1568－1647）who was an artist of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and who lived in Nanjing. WEI was almost a contemporary of WEN Jia but a bit older.
