Fan Kuan
Chinese landscape painter
990 CE to 1020 CE
Fan Kuan (fl.
990–1020) is a Chinese landscape painter of the Song Dynasty (960–1279) considered among the great masters of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
Almost no biographical details survive about him.
He models his early work after that of the artist Li Cheng (919–967), but later he concludes that nature is the only true teacher.
He spends the rest of his life as a recluse in the rugged Qiantang mountains of Shanxi.
World
The Far East
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Fan Kuan's masterpiece and best known painting is his Travelers among Mountains and Streams, a large hanging scroll.
A seminal work of the Northern Song school, it establishes an ideal in monumental landscape painting to which later artists will return time and again for inspiration.
Fan Kuan based the painting on the Taoist principle of reclusion, the composition emphasizes the monumentality of nature.
A packhorse train can barely be seen emerging from a wood at the base of a huge precipice.
Despite the fact that the painting represents an ideal example of the achievements of the Northern Song landscape styles, the painting still represents several archaic conventions dating back to the Tang Dynasty.
The composition remains dominated by a central massif.
The foliage are composed of mechanically repeated and narrow texture strokes.