Summer Pavillion (after Zhao Danian)

In his inscription, Wu Da states that he brushed this scroll in the manner of the Song dynasty painter Zhao Danian (active 1070–1100). The willows, faint color, and rounded, lightly textured rocks with hazy mountains rising above clouds allude to paintings by Zhao, who was a member of the Song imperial family. While Wu Da consciously imitates the forms and composition of a much earlier Chinese painting style, he employs fashionable 17th-century brush-and-ink techniques in their execution: the gentle fading of color and emphasis on ease of tone, for example, are probably borrowed from the mogu or "boneless manner" of painting, in which ink and color washes alone, without a bordering outline, define form.