The Hall of Green Wilderness

A wide expanse of flooded rice fields stretches back to a range of low mountains in the distance. At their feet, the layered roof of a temple pokes up from the heavy mist. Closer to us, rural dwellings, hidden among groves of trees and hills, dot the landscape and a farmer leads a water buffalo across a narrow bridge at the right. In the foreground, as if overseeing this pastoral world, two gentlemen sit conversing in a grand pavilion, probably enjoying the cool breezes over the water. An atmosphere of quiet serenity covers everything like summer mist.

. Early painters in China used bright blue and green colors to create landscapes, and the understated blues and greens here would have suggested antiquity to 18th-century viewers, something heightened by the inscription at the top. It identifies the place as the Hall of Green Wilderness (録野堂 Lǜyětáng ). There were a few over the centuries, but the first was a famous building in the garden of general and statesman Péi Dù 裴度 (765–839), where elite gentlemen would gather for wine, poetry, and music. In fact, this painting may represent an idealized vision of an 18th-century pavilion of the same name at the residence of a wealthy patron of the artist in the city of Yangzhou.