The Wang River estate

Attributed to Song Xu (1525-ca. 1606) · 1570s

Located in the foothills south of the imperial capital at Chang'an (modern Xi'an), Wang River Estate was the country retreat of the court official Wang Wei (701-761), a renowned Tang dynasty poet and painter. Wang once painted twenty of his favorite locations on the property and composed an accompanying series of short poems. While the estate encompassed many wild areas and was not a garden in the conventional sense, Wang's famous depiction inspired later generations to incorporate similar combinations of water and land, mountain and valley, and cultivated and uncultivated into their garden architecture. This long handscroll painting is an imaginative re-creation of Wang's composition.