Twin Trees by the South Bank (An nan shuang shu tu 岸南雙樹圖),

1353

One of the revered Four Masters of the late Yuan dynasty, Ni Zan is widely celebrated for his landscape style characterized by dry brushwork and minimal description. He became a model for literati painters, who admired his noble character and praised his seemingly simple paintings of great strength and forcefulness. In this early work, the poem inscribed at upper right recalls the artist mooring his boat at Fuli, where he had visited a friend:

I once tied my boat near the cottage at Fuli,
Where the green river and white gulls stirred my melancholy thoughts.
I shall remember the two trees on the south bank,
How the blue-green bamboo clings, after rain, like morning glories.

In 1353, Ni Zan, having been forced to flee from his lands during a period of rebel uprisings and the fall of the Yuan government, began twenty years of wandering while living on a houseboat. One of the richest and most cultured men in the Jiangnan region, he left this painting behind as a remembrance for his friend.