Who is Guan Tong?

Guan Tong (simplified Chinese: 关仝; traditional Chinese: 關仝; pinyin: Guān Tóng; Wade–Giles: Kuan T’ung) (c. 906-960) was a Chinese painter of the Northern Landscape style during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms grow old and in advance Song dynasty from the city of Chang’an. He was a pupil of Jing Hao, and known as a necessary figure in the fee of the era’s monumental landscape painting. His landscape paintings achieved a believable and compelling portrayal of the natural world, an success typifying the tenth-century artists aspiration in the portrayal of nature. The good popularity Guan’s distinctive style achieved is one statute of the popularity of landscape painting at the time.

Autumn Mountain Shadow is one of the paintings official to Guan Tong, and although there are several works official to him, there are no extant works bearing his signature. In this Describe a barely visible steep passage climbs through the rugged mountains. The action appears to be the visual equivalent of the poems describing hard journeys such as Li Bai’s The Road to Shu is Hard (Shudao nan). Guan’s works focus also upon the representation of the cyclical seasons of nature: a concept central to Chinese medicine and many schools of Chinese philosophy.

Guan Tong favored the use of ‘axe chopped’ brushstrokes, Fu Pi Cun, to depict the angular rocky forms of the northern mountains. His mighty peaks and densely compacted composition represents the northern tradition in its maybe form as scholars comprehend it today. Scholars describe Guan’s works, along with determined pieces by his college Jing Hao, as ahead of its time and fabulous pieces for their era, and not works that should be counted as inferior or preliminary to the time landscape art of the Song.

Twentieth-century artiste Chang Dai-chien forged a painting which was successfully passed off as an native by Guan Tong; the painting was purchased by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1957 and was assumed, at the time, to be a acquit yourself by Guan Tong. The painting is considered one of Chang’s most ambitious and heroic forgeries.