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Page from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting

Wang Gai

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A two-page spread from the book "Page from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting" by Wang Gai. The pages are yellowed and aged with darker spots and lines around the edges. The image depicts a landscape drawing in black ink with some gray shading. The drawing shows a semicircle landscape scene. The scene on the left is a background of mountains in the distance and some small houses on a flatter area in the bottom left. The right side scene depicts a large rocky outcrop with trees and brush growing on the rocks. The background behind the rocky outcrop fades to lighter in the top right. There are several vertical lines of Asian characters written on the left and right edges. On the left page there are two red stamps with Asian characters. The left and right pages are divided down the middle with a thin dark line. The background behind the book pages is solid white.

Artwork details

Date:
first edition, printed in 1679
Medium:
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Culture:
China
Dimensions:
600 × 490 px
Museum record:
View original
Palette