Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains presents a landscape in a long handscroll. After suffering fire damage, it was divided into two parts, which now have different histories of transmission and preservation.
The Remaining Mountain and Master Wuyong Scroll retain different portions of the original. The work's later history also illuminates collecting and restoration.
Historical context
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains ( pinyin:) is one of the few surviving works by Chinese painter Huang Gongwang (1269–1354) and is considered to be among his greatest works. Painted between 1348 and 1350, the painting was burnt into two pieces in 1650. Today, one piece is kept in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, while the other piece is kept in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Put together, the entire painting would measure 691.3 centimetres (272.2 in) in length.
Huang Gongwang and Fuchun Mountains
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is considered one of the greatest surviving masterpieces by the highly acclaimed Chinese painter Huang Gongwang (1269–1354). He began serious studies in painting only at the age of 50. In 1347, he moved to the Fuchun Mountains (southwest of Hangzhou, along the northern bank of the Fuchun River), where he spent the last years of his life. There he made a number of paintings on the natural landscape, among them Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, which depicts the scenery in Fuyang, Hangzhou.
Beginnings
It was "carefully designed and developed in layers of wet washes and brush strokes, giving a convincing appearance of offhand but inspired organisation and of spontaneous ink-play in detail"—two techniques with which Huang Gongwang is associated, later influencing such artists as Wang Yuanqi, one of the 'Six Masters of the Early Qing'. He presented it to a Taoist priest as a gift in 1350. A century later, the painting was somehow acquired by the Ming Dynasty painter Shen Zhou (1427–1509). During the reign of the Chenghua Emperor (1465–1487), Shen Zhou sent the painting to an unnamed calligrapher to be inscribed (a curious point considering Shen Zhou was an excellent calligrapher himself). However, the son of this calligrapher seized the painting which, after a few changes of hands, reemerged on the market being sold at a high price.
Unable to afford the price, there was nothing Shen Zhou could do except to make a copy of the painting himself. This imitation by Shen Zhou has become the most well-known and acclaimed copy among all others.
Not long after he made the copy, Shen Zhou gave it to a bureaucrat friend named Fan Shunju. Fan Shunju then began to search for the authentic copy. When he found it, he bought it at a hefty price and invited Shen Zhou to inscribe on it. Shen Zhou then noted down at the end of the scroll the story of how the painting was lost and found.
Over the following centuries, the painting had come to know several owners, including Tan Zhiyi, Dong Qichang and Wu Zhengzhi. When Wu Zhengzhi died, he passed the painting to his third son Wu Hongyu, who loved the painting so much that when he went on refuge, he left behind all valuables and only brought the painting and a copy of the Thousand Character Classic by Master Zhiyong. In fact, he was so fond of these two pieces of work that he had them burnt shortly before he died, so that he could bring them to the afterlife.