Red Jade and Coral

From She-hsien in Anhui province, Cheng-I was a close friend of the famous Anhui artist, Ch'eng Sui (1605-1691). A landscape painter and also inkmaker, he wrote a two-volume history of ink. His seal, impressed here, refers to the thirty-six peaks of Huang-shan (Yellow Mountain), the magnificent Anhui range that inspired so many paintings and poems. Deceptively modern in its impact, the construction of this stark composition recalls the reductionist compositions of the Anhui masters. The brushwork, however, is more calligraphic with its long, moist, modulated brushstrokes than is most Anhui dry-line painting.