Landscape

In its uniformly upward-directed composition, Luo Mu’s imagery of stone peaks amid flowing waters forms a vertically expanded wilderness panorama. The long, firmly delineated marks of ink—called hemp-fiber strokes—forming the exaggerated rock outcroppings add to the compositional uniformity.

The Southern School style of this landscape creatively regenerates past amateur-scholar painting forms and techniques following the approach formulated by Luo’s contemporary, the Qing dynasty theorist and artist Dong Qichang (1555–1636). The brushwork Lou employs for his accentuated mountains, for instance, can be interpreted as an adaptation of the long, curved texture strokes originally used by the 10th-century Chinese painter Dong Yuan to depict low, gently rounded grassy hills. Luo is particularly known for this readily identifiable manner.