Mountain Retreat

Cheng Ming was born in Shexian in Anhui province and lived and worked near Yangzhou. He was a noted poet and a student of the individualist artist Shitao, one of the greatest individualist literati painters of the seventeenth century. Individualist painters did not follow traditional norms of landscape painters, but created their own distinct style using different brushworks. The painting depicts a literati recluse visiting a scholarly friend in his wintry mountain retreat. The spiky calligraphic brushwork of the rocks is counterbalanced by Cheng's own poem, which reads:

Willow catkins, reed embroidery, wind through the entire night.

But still, there is the plank bridge for crossing the flowery stream.

That man lives here, in evening blue-green, in midst of chilly fragrance.

As spring comes to a thousand cliffs and myriad ravines.