Landscapes of the Four Seasons

Landscapes of the Four Seasons

Shitao (Zhu Ruoji)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Shitao frequently employed the album format to give full play to his imaginative use of brush techniques and compositional designs. In this series of eight leaves, datable stylistically to the last decade of the artist's life, he explores the theme of landscape. Working in a free, wet-ink manner, Shitao reveals his independence from conventional models and methods in these highly personal images. As he observed in his Recorded Sayings on Painting of about 1700: Even if my brush does not resemble brush and my ink does not resemble ink and my painting does not resemble painting, I make sure that my self is always present in my work. (Wen Fong, trans.)

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Landscapes of the Four SeasonsLandscapes of the Four SeasonsLandscapes of the Four SeasonsLandscapes of the Four SeasonsLandscapes of the Four Seasons

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.