Landscapes after Song and Yuan masters

Lan Ying

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lan Ying was a breaker of boundaries. Dong Qichang and his cohort, the leading tastemakers of Lan’s day, tended to look down on painters who relied on virtuoso skill and flashy brushwork, preferring directness and simplicity. Lan, a prolific and skilled professional artist, nevertheless won them over, transcending his status as a professional and gaining provisional entry into the class of scholar-painters. Lan adopted Dong’s practice of making old-masters albums, and this is one of his finest. Here, Lan marries his eye for dramatic composition to an uncharacteristic restraint in brushwork, avoiding his more typical strong, angular forms that would have raised eyebrows among literati critics.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art