The painting, Lofty Mount Lu, is a hanging scroll that was painted with if ink on color paper. The painting itself is relatively small, only a foot tall. The artiest, Shen Zhou, incorporates poetry on the top of the painting, the poem praises a beloved teacher. “Inscription and seals are essential elements in this hanging scroll, in which Shen used the lofty peaks of Mount Lu to express visually the grandeur of a beloved teacher’s virtue and character. ” Lofty Mount Lu is a well detailed painting involving a stream flowing down a mountain and forming a waterfall.
Shen Zhou used a good amount of detail like the water over the rocks, different levels of rocks to form the mountain, and the wooden pillars holding up the small bridge. Shen Zhen really captured the true picture of Chinese landscape. The Forest Chamber at Ju’ou, by Wang Meng, is a painting of thick dense tress, buildings in the hill sides, waves flowing through the painting. This painting has many visual and yet somewhat cluttered layers with depth to it.
The depth starts at the bottom of the picture and works its way up where your eye is drawn to the body of water to the top right. The body of water opens up the painting so the viewer doesn’t feel enclosed into it. The trees get smaller towards the top of the painting showing depth in the landscape. In the painting of the Lofty Mount Lu and Forest Chamber at Ju’ou there are many similarities that they share. The attention to detail in both paintings are alike, they both show attention to the trees, water and the rocky terrain.
Both paintings show the water flowing from the middle portion of the painting and flowing out of picture to the bottom left. In each painting they use the same form of brush strokes and a few colors, both artiest color in the trees and grass. Although there are a significant amount of similarities between the Lofty Mount Lu and Forest Chamber, there are also some differences between them. The Lofty Mount looked to be more organized and better thought out compared to the Forest Chamber.
You can see where the mountain ends in the Lofty mount Lu but it is hard to figure out what Wang Meng was trying paint in the top of his painting; it was hard to find the boundaries. The Lofty Mount Lu and Forest Chamber at Ju’ou are both great pieces of art work that have stood the test of time and remain famous today. Both paintings have many similarities and a few differences, the paintings seemed like they could have been painted by the same artiest, but they were painted a 100 years apart.
Bibliography
Kleiner, F. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: A Global History. 14th edition. Boston: Thompson, 2012
