Clearing skies over Mount Hua 華嶽睛嵐圖

Located on the eastern end of the Qinling Range in Shaanxi Province, Mount Hua has been venerated since antiquity as one of the Five Sacred Mountains of China. Home to many Daoist temples and monasteries, it was also a favorite destination for poets and painters seeking direct inspiration from nature. Among those was Fan Kuan, a Shaanxi native and one the greatest early masters of monumental landscape painting. A man of strong Daoist inclinations, Fan Kuan is said to have lived for many years among these mountains spending whole days and nights absorbed in deep concentration while seeking to internalize the infinitely variable forms and features of the hills and their changing seasonal appearance. As an artist, Fan Kuan was attracted to the dramatic aspects of nature and intrigued by the tactile surfaces of things, such as rocks and trees, as well as by the underlying "bone structure" of massive geological forms.