Shao Mi’s painting Waterfall at Mt. Lu is part of a longstanding tradition of landscape painting in Chinese art. Mountain landscapes have been used throughout centuries of Chinese painting and have changed dramatically with the popularization of new styles. Although Shao Mi’s style is vastly different from the method of Song, Yuan, or even earlier Ming artists, references to the old masters are apparent in his work.
Mt. Lu is a major historical landmark, located in China’s Jiangxi Province, and it served as an important inspiration to scholars, poets, artists, and monks (Wu 153). The Three Step Waterfall is the most famous cataract on Mt. Lu and is named for the way it flows over three jutting rock formations that alter its direction (Mt. Lushan). Many artists choose this location for the subject of their works because of its importance as a Daoist religious site and possibly because its distinctive appearance makes it easily identifiable (Munakata 111). Despite the fact that Mt. Lu is featured so frequently in artwork Shao’s painting is truly unique.
Conflicting influences developed Shao Mi’s painting style and caused it to change in his later phase (Cahill, Distant Mountains 59). When the Wu School was founded it was comprised of literati artists who placed equal importance upon painting, calligraphy and poetry. Later artists from Soochow were uneducated and used a quick, expressive style that focused less on minute details and more on using bold strokes to capture an image. Some historians blame this change on the turn toward mercantilism in Soochow that resulted in a drop in artistic patronage (Cahill, Distant Mountains 31). As the son of a prominent physician Shao was well educated and enjoyed the company of scholars and...
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...scured the mountain in his own work with mist changing the entire appearance of the composition.
Works Cited
Cahill, James. Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth Century Chinese Painting. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982. Print.
---. Distant Mountains: Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Dynasty, 1570-1644. New York: Weatherhill Inc, 1982. Print.
Munakata, Kiyohiko. Sacred Mountains in Chinese Art. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Print.
“Shen Zhou: Lofty Mount Lu.”chinaonlinemuseum.com. China Online Museum. n.d. Web. 10 April, 2011.
Sirén, Osvald. A History of Later Chinese Painting. Vol. 2. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1978. Print.
Wu, Marshall P.S. The Orchid Pavilion Gathering: Chinese Painting from the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Vol. 1. Ann Arbor: University Lithoprinters Inc, 2000. Print.
Fenimore Cooper. His Country and His Art, The State University of New York College at Oneonta, Hugh C. MacDougall, Ed. 21 Nov. 2001 <http://www.Oneonta.edu/external/cooper/articles/1999suny-zhang.html>
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Morton, W. Scott, and Charlton M. Lewis. China: Its History and Culture. 4th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
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