At nearly ten feet high, this monumental landscape is one of Hongren’s largest known works. The painting invites the viewer to enter at a point between the pines in the foreground and enjoy the calm surface of the water at the foot of a majestic mass of mountains.

Hongren’s hometown was near Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain, one of the great, scenic mountains in China. He fled south during the Manchu invasion and returned several years later, after the turmoil of dynastic change had subsided. Like many others, he became a monk to avoid political difficulties; Hongren, the Buddhist name he took, is how he is now known.

The Huangshan region was not only one of spectacular vistas, but during Hongren’s time was very economically prosperous. The area’s affluence nourished many artists, who depicted the mountainous landscape, often with dry, sparse brushwork. Hongren, who was acknowledged during his own time and by later critics as one of the greatest painters of the mid-1600s, is traditionally known as one of the Four Great Masters of the Xin’an district. Unlike many of his smaller works, which have a compositional simplicity, this looming, elaborate image is almost overwhelming. Created one year before Hongren’s death, it has been called his swan song.

People . . . regarded possession of a painting by Hongren, or the lack thereof, as determining one’s refinement or vulgarity.
—Scholar, official, and connoisseur Zhou Lianggong, 1612–1672