Clouded Mountains

Huang Ding is said to have traveled much, hence his nickname, "Lonely Traveler [Duwangke]." While one might think that his landscape paintings reflect the places and things he saw during nearly thirty years of wandering, his extant scrolls indicate that in reality he depicted idealized views. In them, he emulates styles and compositions of traditional Chinese masters of the brush who set the aesthetic canon of early Qing dynasty (1644—1911) amateur scholar painting.

This work, which he painted near the end of his life, draws on two prior artistic sources. Huang renders the hills and mountains in blunt brushstrokes and thickly dotted textures in a traditional landscape form derived from the Northern Song amateur scholar-painter Mi Fu (1051—1107). This scroll holds another layer of homage to the past, for his "copying" of the so-called Mi-style is additionally filtered through interpretations of this revered aesthetic tradition by the Southern Song painter Gao Kegong (1248—circa 1310), referred to in the artist’s inscription at the upper left of the scroll.