Pavilions in the Mountains of the Immortals

Wang Hui was eighty years old when he painted this imposing hanging scroll, which he inscribed with the title and a short text that identifies his source of inspiration as the work of the early master Wang Meng (circa 1308-1385). Wang Hui learned the art of painting by studying with important living masters and by copying antique paintings. Here, the composition, the strokes creating texture on the mountains, and the form of the pine trees clearly recall the style of the ancient master Wang Meng. Nevertheless, in this and other paintings, Wang Hui expressed his own personal style characterized by exceptionally animated, calligraphic brushwork and dramatic compositions.

Pavilions in the Mountains of the Immortals displays Wang Hui's typical combination of descriptive realism (such as the treatment here of buildings and trees) with impressionistic, abstracted mountain forms. Wang Hui is remembered in history as one of the major proponents of the conservative Orthodox School of landscape painting that was predominate after the seventeenth century.