CHANG CH’ENG-LUNG
late Ming dynasty
circa 1600

Detail from a large Chinese hanging scroll landscape painting in ink and colours on silk. A range of fantastic mountains towers above a group of literati recluses who have descended from their pavilion to survey the dense bamboo forest. Beyond unfolds a complex array of waterfalls, and behind those the unlikely, magnificently imposing peaks.

Signed in archaic seal script Chang Ch’eng-lung, with two seals of the painter.

The landscape elements of the great Wu Pin are evident in this impressive tour de force work, as is perhaps the figural stylisation of Li Shih-ta in the group of scholars; yet Chang also adds dramatic and original compositional elements of his own.

Chang Ch’eng-lung, from K’ai-feng, Honan, was an accomplished copyist of many of the great late Ming painters, who developed not only a mastery of their styles but eventually a syncretic manner of his own. During the Wan-li period (1573 - 1620) Chang compiled a publication of fan paintings by the great masters, for which Ch’en Chi-ju wrote the introduction. His avowed, signed paintings are extremely rare; his masterpiece is a huge chung-t’ang painting of Mount O-mei, dated 1601, now in the Hopei Provincial Museum, illustrated as the front cover of the museum’s painting collection volume.