The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, USA but it is currently \'not on view\'
Location History:
Mountain Landscape was made in Japan during the early-mid 15th century. It was first owned by Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation in New York, which later gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2015, now part of Asian Art collection.
The 'Mountain Landscape' painting is a pair of ink paintings, six-panel folding screens. What we we are looking at here is the left piece. These works are attributed to the painter, Tensho Shubun. This place that is shown is one of the pieces. The left painting was created during the early to mid-15th century during Japan's Muromachi period. This was a time when Japanese artists were influenced by ink paintings. The painting shows a small peaceful village beside a stream at the foot of a big cliff.
We see men unloading goods from a boat in the foreground. There are two wineshops with flags flying at their doorways. In one shop we see, two gentlemen are being served wine by a man. Behind these shops we can see houses and haystacks. We also see two men on the right walking towards the village via a mountain pass. One of them appears to be the master travelling on a donkey. The other is the servant accompanying the master, holding an umbrella.
The painting is painted in ink and color on paper. The artist used gradations of black ink to provide depth and texture. The brush work is a mix bold and delicate at the same time. The artist made lines for the rocky cliffs and thin lines for the trees and the mist and water. The overall effect of this brush work depicts a big landscape that feels both monumental and serene.
The painting is more than a landscape. It is a testament to the aspirations of the Japanese elite during the Muromachi period. Japanese artists and their patrons adopted painting styles and techniques. This way they showed that they were part of a cosmopolitan artistic tradition. The ink monochrome puts light on simplicity and restraint of the ink medium and the mood of the landscape all show similar characteristics with the Zen Buddhist ideals that were influential in Muromachi Japan.
The painting of 'Mountain Landscape' is inspired from works of Xia Gui. He was a court painter. His paintings held value in Japan. Japanese artists like Shubun studied and emulated his style. The rock formations in the Mountain Landscape painting are described with contour lines, textured with axe-cut brushstrokes and accented with moss dots. These are all techniques of the Xia Gui manner. The Mountain Landscape painting captures a moment of exchange and artistic aspiration. It shows us a world where Japanese painters looked to masters for inspiration. Art was a means of connecting with a cosmopolitan culture.
The right screen of the Mountain Landscape painting is unrelated to the current painting. They were not created as a pair. The right screen is a work, by a follower of Shubun. The screens were brought together at some point much later. This means that the screens we see today were assembled at a date pairing two unrelated paintings that share a similar style and subject matter.
This multi-panel folding screen beautifully captures the essence of traditional East Asian ink wash painting. The delicate ink work creates a serene, misty atmosphere, masterfully utilizing negative space to evoke vast distance and towering peaks. The subtle variations in tone gracefully guide the eye across the landscape, balancing prominent, detailed pine trees in the foreground with faint, atmospheric mountains in the background. It is a contemplative and harmonious piece that perfectly captures nature’s quiet majesty.
