Snow Along the River

In imperial China, women painters were not unheard of, but they were typically limited to certain gender-defined genres, such as flower painting. Advances in women’s rights during the twentieth century greatly improved educational and social opportunities for women. In the arts, women began to break through traditional boundaries, becoming active participants in so-called literati painting, long the elite domain of educated men.

When Tseng brushed this landscape in her Beijing studio in the late 1940s, China was embroiled in a violent civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. In this dead, lifeless landscape with its black ghostlike trees and frigid blanket of snow along the zigzagging shoreline of a cold, grey river, Tseng conveys a certain sadness. Stylistically, Tseng’s combination of coarse, dry brushwork with wet, heavy ink refers to a long line of literati painters from Wang Wei (699—759) to Dong Qichang (1555—1635). However, in the regulated spatial recession of the foggy horizon, western perspective is evident.