Snow Mountain and Red Trees Scroll, Six Dynasties

This scroll, housed in the Taipei National Palace Museum, depicts a snow-clad landscape where crimson foliage contrasts starkly with silvery peaks. The composition employs pale ink outlines without texture strokes (cunfa), instead layering azurite green, vermilion, and white pigments to evoke a vivid yet archaic atmosphere. Repeating arcs in mountain forms create rhythmic simplicity, echoing Six Dynasties aesthetics. A scholar contemplates the vista from a pavilion, while a visitor on a donkey crosses a frost-laden bridge, their postures subtly conveying winter’s bite and literati resilience.

Though bearing Zhang Sengyou’s signature, scholars note discrepancies: Zhang’s documented “concave-convex technique” (aotu) for Buddhist figures and sparse brushwork (shuti) differ from this work’s stiff architectural lines and flat color planes, suggesting a Ming-era reinterpretation of “boneless landscape” (mogu shanshui). Imperial seals and Emperor Qianlong’s poetic colophon (“A donkey-rider on the broken bridge resembles the hermit of Lonely Mountain”) authenticate its elite Ming-Qing provenance.

Blending Six Dynasties’ naivety with Ming stylization, this scroll exemplifies how late scholars like Dong Qichang reimagined Zhang’s legacy, bridging ancient innovation and early modern artistic revival.