Early Spring
Guo Xi (about 1020 to about 1090) · 1072, Northern Song dynasty
A mountain seems to breathe on this tall silk scroll. Its peaks twist upward through drifting mist, rocks bulge like clouds, trees with bare crooked branches cling to the ledges, and streams and waterfalls thread down through the folds of the landscape. Small figures are scattered through it: fishermen on the water at the bottom, travellers with loads on the paths, a woman with children walking up from the shore. Everything is soft, damp and shifting, the look of the countryside as the snow melts and the earth wakes up. Guo Xi signed and dated it in the year ten seventy two.
Guo Xi was the leading court painter of the Northern Song and the author of a famous essay on landscape painting written down by his son. He argued that a painting should be a place you could walk through and live in, and that mountains have moods that change with the seasons and the weather. Look at how the composition offers three views at once, looking up at the peak, looking across at the middle distance and looking down into the valley, a device he called the three distances. The rocks are painted with wet, curling strokes that give them the look of rolling clouds, and the trees have branches like crab claws. The mist is left as untouched silk.
The scroll was painted for the Emperor Shenzong's palace and has been in the imperial collection ever since, which is why it survives in such good condition. It is shown only occasionally because of its fragility, usually with Fan Kuan's Travelers and Li Tang's Wind in the Pines, the three great Song landscapes of the museum. When all three hang together it is an event, and the galleries fill with visitors who have waited years to see them.
Did You Know? Guo Xi's essay on painting, recorded by his son, describes how mountains should look in every season, and this scroll is his own demonstration of spring.
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