After Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains

Born in Taicang, thirty-four miles from Changshu, Wang Yuanqi was the youngest of the Four Wangs of the early Qing dynasty. He was a diligent painter known for luscious layers of ink and subtle control of his brush. Following the aesthetic principles of his family elders and his contemporaries, he also seriously studied Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains. He produced this painting when he was seventy. In his inscription on the painting, he expressed the irreplaceable position of Huang and the Fuchun scroll in his art circle: “My grandfather Wang Shimin (the oldest of the Four Wangs as well as Wang Yuanqi’s painting teacher) always told me that Huang Gongwang is canonical in Chinese painting, and Huang displayed his finest brush skills in Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.”

Wang Yuanqi had seen Huang’s Fuchun scroll. But as this masterpiece never entered his own personal collection, he had to create the painting from memory. He definitely imitates Huang’s lines and dots but embedded personal creativity in his composition.