Quick Answer: What Connects Wen Zhengming’s Myriad Valleys?
Contending Streams Among Myriads of Valleys (万壑争流图, Wàn Hè Zhēng Liú Tú), by Wen Zhengming (文徵明, Wén Zhēng Míng), threads pale water through a narrow field of blue-green mountains.
- Collection: Nanjing Museum.
- Medium: Ink and color on paper, in hanging-scroll format.
- Date and scale: 1550; about 1.3 meters high and 35 centimeters wide.
- Look first: Trace the changing directions of the streams before examining individual trees.
It was made as a companion to an earlier landscape, at a collector’s request.
A pale channel descends between colored cliffs near the middle of the picture. Lower down, water spreads sideways and disappears behind trees before emerging through another opening. Follow its turns around the projecting rocks and through the wooded lower passages.
The foreground contains a quieter encounter: two small standing figures near the bank. Above them, the water and stacked mountain forms continue through most of the scroll’s height.
Identify the Nanjing Landscape
The catalogued work is a paper hanging scroll in Nanjing Museum, dated 1550. One published record gives its painted dimensions as 132.7 × 35.3 cm. [1]
A 2018 chapter gives 132.7 × 35.3 cm in its caption and 132.4 × 35.2 cm in a note, without explaining the discrepancy. [2]
For looking, the proportions are more immediately useful than these few millimeters. The painting is almost four times as high as it is wide. Its streams connect several levels within a slender space.
Use the whole reproduction to locate its large divisions. There is open paper above the highest mountains, a crowded central passage of rocks and water, and a lower area where trees frame the two figures.
A crop of a peak can clarify outlines and color, but it cannot show how that peak relates to the lower gathering. Keep a complete view beside any enlargement.
Follow Water through the Mountain Masses
Begin near the pale, outlined waterway in the upper-middle section. Its banks turn around projecting rocks. The channel narrows in one place, then opens into a broader passage containing scattered stones.
The curves drawn across the water make this pale area active. Compare their repeated bends with the more angular edges of the surrounding cliffs. Even where the water looks relatively light, it contains a dense pattern of small directional marks.
Farther down, trees partly conceal the route. Follow the remaining pale intervals around their trunks and foliage rather than assuming that every stretch must be continuously visible.
The landscape-painting guide explains how openings and solid forms work together. Here, test that relationship at the broad horizontal channel near the middle: its banks connect rocks on either side while its lighter surface separates them.
Now move to the two figures. Their robes are much smaller than the nearby tree trunks, and their position on a narrow strip of ground provides a resting point beside the moving water.
Compare their immediate surroundings with the steep terrain above. Compare the level bank with the successive rock faces and wooded ridges above.
Look Closely at Blue, Green and Ink
This is a blue-and-green landscape (青绿山水, Qīng Lǜ Shān Shuǐ). Fine rock outlines accompany substantial colored washes, with lighter ochre near mountain bases and carefully outlined water. These features belong to the work’s combination of detailed ink drawing and color. [3]
Look at the upper-left group of peaks. A darker edge helps distinguish one face from another, while blue-green passages give each rocky mass a broader colored body. The ochre areas change the surface again near ledges and lower slopes.
Compare those broad areas with the fine marks of the trees. A cluster of narrow, dark conifers can remain legible against a relatively light slope, while denser foliage gathers into a more continuous dark shape below.
The techniques guide provides context for outlines, texture and washes. Here, use those terms to distinguish visible effects. A reproduction does not by itself identify the exact pigments or establish the order in which every layer was applied.
The composition also keeps many distant forms distinct. A discussion of Wen’s late blue-and-green landscapes relates this clarity, together with densely layered mountains and winding streams, to their flattened decorative effect. [3]
Compare the small trees high on a ridge with the large foreground trunks. Their difference in scale suggests distance, even though both remain carefully described. Compare how the smaller ridge trees remain distinct despite occupying much less paper than the foreground trunks.
Compare the Two Companion Scrolls
Contending Greenery among Thousands of Cliffs (千岩竞秀图, Qiān Yán Jìng Xiù Tú) was completed in the third lunar month of 1550. After obtaining it, Xu Mochuan (徐默川, Xú Mò Chuān) requested another landscape as its companion. The inscription on Myriad Valleys dates that second work to the sixth lunar month. [2]
| Work | Collection | Place in the pair |
|---|---|---|
| Contending Greenery among Thousands of Cliffs | National Palace Museum, Taipei | Completed first, in the third lunar month of 1550 |
| Contending Streams Among Myriads of Valleys | Nanjing Museum | Requested afterward; dated to the sixth lunar month of 1550 |
The companion-scroll guide lets you compare their lower figures, trees and crowded upper rocks. Look especially at the more conspicuous colored mountain surfaces and extensive water passages in Myriad Valleys.
Wen describes reluctantly agreeing to make a matching work. His self-deprecating assessment of it is not an objective ranking of the two paintings. [2]
The inscriptions-and-seals guide helps separate this written account from what can be observed in the scene. The literati-painting guide develops the social setting of such exchanges.
Return to the lower bank afterward. The two figures give the landscape a human scale, while the inscription supplies a different kind of relationship: a painter responding to someone who already owned the companion work.
FAQs About Wen Zhengming’s Myriad Valleys
Were the companion paintings made at the same time?
They belong to the same year, but their inscriptions place completion in different lunar months. The second was requested after the first had been obtained.
Why do published dimensions differ?
The consulted publications preserve two slightly different sets. They do not establish why, so neither a change in mounting nor simple rounding should be asserted as the explanation.
Are the foreground figures identified?
The sources consulted here do not identify them by name. The collector mentioned in the inscription should not automatically be treated as one of the painted figures.
Fuentes
[1] China Academy of Art Library. Wen Zhengming: Wanhe zhengliu tu, picture record CH0028355-125-1
[2] National Palace Museum; Lin Li-chiang. Suzhou as a Model: The Production and Influence of Text-and-Image “Suzhou Fakes,” relevant discussion and figures 7–8
[3] Palace Museum; Shan Guolin. A Brief Discussion of the Style of Wen Zhengming’s Blue-and-Green Landscapes