Zhan Ziqian, Northern Qi - Sui Dynasty
Ink and color on silk
43*85cm

Zhan Ziqian was good at landscape, characters and wall paintings; this work is the earliest surviving pure landscape work. The painter portrays a landscape in spring with color filling, in a simple, straightforward style. Small hills high and low are sketched without light-ink texturing stroke; different shades of color are used to express distance and where the sides are sunlit.The trees are like stretched out palm and fingers; there is no necessary sense of space between trunk and branch. People and horses wandering in spring complement the landscape; the perspectives of people, horses, boats, bridges and buildings are well-arranged and shapes vivid, indicating the emergence of these subjects in Tang paintings at its prime.