Landscape at Madangshan

This scroll's combination of a traditional subject with a more contemporary style perfectly symbolizes Huang Binhong's place on the cusp between classical and modern Chinese painting.

The cluster of rustic buildings beside a river in a mountainous landscape depicted in this scroll is one of the most traditional subjects in Chinese painting, with a history stretching back almost a thousand years. Yet the style of the painting--with its roughly sketched buildings, dense layers of ink and colors, and intimations of light and shadow--is thoroughly twentieth century. At a time when many Chinese artists were experimenting with folk art forms or Western painting styles, Huang Binhong continued to work with classical Chinese subjects and media, turning them in innovative directions. He is now recognized as having played a key role in the survival and vitality of traditional Chinese painting in the modern era.

This painting is not dated, but the style is consistent with Huang's mature period. Its inscription, a quatrain in the upper right corner, helps place this painting within his oeuvre: As the sun sets on the clamorous river, we ride the strong current, Mist gathers around the chilly cliffs, the mountains of Chu turn autumnal. Turning my head back toward Haidong, distant across the waves, I see only sand gulls sending off our boat.

Boarding a boat at Madangshan, Binhong Madangshan is a mountain in Jiangxi province overlooking the Yangzi River, and Huang was probably inspired to paint this image after one of his numerous trips around China in the late 1930s and '40s. Although the painting was never intended to be a realistic depiction of Madangshan, its association with a specific place is important for reinforcing the sense of Chinese tradition that imbues this painting. At a historical moment when the survival of China as a nation was in some doubt, Huang's travel-inspired paintings reconfirmed the vital power of the Chinese landscape to motivate the hearts and minds of its people.

Huang was not an overtly political artist, but the sense of cultural and national pride embodied by his paintings may be one reason why they continued to be celebrated even after the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

INSCRIPTION: LANDSCAPE AT MADANGSHAN
日暮江聲赴急流，塞垣雲護楚山秋;
海東回首波瀾闊，只見沙禽送客舟。
馬當山舟次
賓虹
As the sun sets on the clamorous river, we ride the strong current. Mist gathers around the chilly cliffs; the mountains of Chu turn autumnal.
Turning my head back toward Haidong, distant across the waves, I see only sand gulls sending off our boat.
Boarding a boat at Madangshan
Bīnhóng
—Translated by Charles Mason