Guo Xi - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Guo Xi (c. 1020–c. 1090) Chinese

Chinese people

The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

painter from Henan Province

Henan

Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...

who lived during the Northern Song dynasty. One text entitled "The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams" (Linquan Gaozhi 林泉高致) is attributed to him. The work covers a variety of themes centered around the appropriate way of painting a landscape. He was a court professional, a literati

Scholar-bureaucrats

Scholar-officials or Scholar-bureaucrats were civil servants appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance from the Sui Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China's last imperial dynasty. These officials mostly came from the well-educated men known as the...

, well-educated painter who developed an incredibly detailed system of idiomatic brushstrokes which became important for later painters. His most famous work is Early Spring
Early Spring (painting)
Early Spring is a hanging scroll painting by Guo Xi. Completed in 1072, it is one of the most famous works of Chinese art from the Song Dynasty period. The work demonstrates his innovative techniques for producing multiple perspectives which he called "the angle of totality."The poem in the upper...

, dated 1072. The work demonstrates his innovative techniques for producing multiple perspectives which he called "the angle of totality." This type of visual representation is also called "Floating Perspective," a technique which displaces the static eye of the viewer and highlights the differences between Chinese and Western modes of spatial representation.

The following is an excerpt from his treatise, "mountains and waters":

The clouds and the vapours of real landscapes are not the same at the four seasons. In spring they are light and diffused, in summer rich and dense, in autumn scattered and thin, in winter dark and solitary. When such effects can be seen in pictures, the clouds and vapours have an air of life. The mist around the mountains is not the same at the four seasons. The mountains in spring are light and seductive as if smiling: the mountains in summer have a blue-green colour which seems to be spread over them; the mountains in autumn are bright and tidy as if freshly painted; the mountains in winter are sad and tranquil as if sleeping.

Guo Xi was often referred to as a “Northern Song master” when it came to painting. His work inspired many later artists and he even had landscapes dedicated to him. His lesser-known “Deep Valley” scroll painting depicts a serene mountain valley covered with snow and several trees struggling to survive on precipitous cliffs. The ink washes and amorphous brush strokes are employed to model surfaces that suggest the veiling effects of the atmosphere. One of Guo Xi’s techniques was to layer ink washes to build up forms and his “Deep Valley” is a masterpiece of the use of light ink and magnificent composition.

See also