The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Vertically long hanging scroll in black and grey ink strokes depicting a rocky mountain rising up into the sky with Chinese calligraphy above (see "Inscriptions"). Trees grow across the mountain, some with spindly branches and individually detailed leaves, particularly at the base. Above, triangular trees are made with dark, horizontal strokes. Clouds snake across the peaks.

Mt. Qingbian

1617

Dong Qichang

(Chinese, 1555–1636)
China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
hanging scroll, ink on paper
Painting: 225 x 67.6 cm (88 9/16 x 26 5/8 in.); Overall: 355 x 92.7 cm (139 3/4 x 36 1/2 in.)
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund 1980.10
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Dong Qichang had visited the Bian Mountains, which are part of a low range located not far from Wuxing and Lake Tai in the southern province of Zhejiang.

Description

Dong Qichang radically transforms the landscape composition into a purely abstract design. He organizes the mountain forms to achieve an overall sense of structure, activating the flow of energy (qi) and the momentum of force (shi) throughout the pictorial design. In his art, brush and ink assume life independent of the depicted forms, so that the painting can be appreciated for “the sheer marvels of brush and ink.”
  • 1800s
    Li Enqing 李恩慶 [19th century]
    ?-–1980
    (Wan-go H. C. Weng 翁萬戈 [1918–2020], Lyme, NH, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1980–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Sirén, Osvald. Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles. New York: Ronald Press, 1956. Mentioned: VII, Lists, 247
    Qin, Zuyong, and Roger Goepper. Im Schatten Des Wu-T'ung-Baumes: [Gedanken Zur Malerei Von Ch'in Tsu-Yung]. Munchen: Hirmer, 1959. Reproduced: pl. 17
    Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962. no. 67
    Wu, Nelson Ikon. Tung Chʻi-Chʻang, 1555-1636: Apathy in Government and Fervor in Art. Stanford, CA: Board of Trustees of the Stanford University, 1962. Reproduced: pl. 4
    Goepper, Roger. The Essence of Chinese Painting. London: Lund Humphries, 1963. Reproduced: pls. 61–63
    Lee, Sherman E. A History of Far Eastern Art. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1964. Reproduced: p. 439, fig. 581
    Lee, Sherman E. A History of Far Eastern Art. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1973. Reproduced: p. 439, fig. 581
    Cahill, James. "Chūgoku kaiga niokeru kisō to gensō" [Fantastics and eccentrics in Chinese painting]. Kokka (1975): no. 978, pp. 9–29 (pt.1). Reproduced: color pl. 2
    Hironobu Kohara 古原宏伸. Jo I, Tō Kishō [徐渭 董其昌 = Xu Wei, Dong Qichang]. Tōkyō: Chūō Kōronsha, 1978. Reproduced: p. 170, pl. 38, pl. 39, p. 157
    Sullivan, Michael. Symbols of Eternity: The Art of Landscape Painting in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1979. Reproduced: p. 134, pl. 80
    Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980. Reproduced: pp. 246–247, cat. no. 192
    Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219. Reproduced: p. 206; Mentioned: p. 218, no. 282 www.jstor.org
    Li, Chu-tsing. "The Great Tradition in Chinese Painting." Asia Vol. 4, No. 4 (November/December 1981): pp. 32–37 and 42–43. Reproduced: p. 34
    Cahill, James. The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
    Suzuki, Kei 鈴木敬. Chūgoku kaiga sōgō zuroku [中國繪畫總合圖錄= Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings], 第1卷. アメリカ·カナダ篇[= vol. 1 American and Canadian collections]. Tōkyō: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1982. p. 252, no 277
    Barnhart, Richard M., Xin Yang, Chongzheng Nie, James Cahill, Shaojun Lang, and Hung Wu. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1997. Reproduced: p. 234, no. 218
    Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998. Reproduced: pp. 94–95
    Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998. Reproduced: p.62, cat. no. 37
    Nishioka, Yasuhiro 西岡康宏 and Noriko Miyazaki 宮崎法子. Min 明. Tōkyō: Shōgakukan, 1999. Reproduced: pp. 82–83 no. 89, 90
    Han, Chŏng-hŭi. Han'guk kwa Chungguk ŭi hoehwa: kwan'gyesŏng kwa pigyoron. Sŏul-si: Hakkojae, 1999. Reproduced: p. 91, no. 42
    Hearn, Maxwell K., and Wen Fong. Along the Riverbank: Chinese Paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. Reproduced: fig. 35, p. 41
    Thorp, Robert L., and Richard Ellis Vinograd. Chinese Art & Culture. New York: Abrams, 2001. Reproduced: p. 323, 9-6
    Lauer, Uta "Man and the Mountain - Wen Boren's Creation of Tianmushan." Oriental Art Magazine XLVIII:2 (2002): 11.
    Elkins, James. Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2003. Reproduced: pl. 33
    Mair, Victor H., Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, and Paul Rakita Goldin. Hawai'i reader in traditional Chinese culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005. Reproduced: pl. 101
    Stokstad, Marilyn, David Cateforis, and Stephen Addiss. Art History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005. Reproduced: fig. 21-11
    Schirokauer, Conrad. A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. Reproduced: p. 212, fig. 8.4
    Schirokauer, Conrad. A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. Reproduced: p. 280, fig. 10.4
    Chang, Joseph. “From the Clear and Distant Landscape of Wuxing to the Humble Hermit of Clouds and Woods.” Ars Orientalis, vol. 37, 2009, pp. 32–47. Reproduced: p. 43, fig. 15 29550007
    Brooke, Sandy. Drawing As Expression: Techniques and Concepts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007. Reproduced: p. 6, fig. 1.7
    Ware, Robert, Raymond Jonson, and MaLin Wilson-Powell. To Form from Air: Music and the Art of Raymond Jonson. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2010. Reproduced: Fig 10, pp. 23, 106
    Franklin, David and C. Griffith Mann. Treasures from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2012. Reproduced: pp. 38–39
    Franklin, David. The Cleveland Museum of Art. London: Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd., 2012. Reproduced: pp. 38–39
    Burnett, Katharine Persis. Dimensions of Originality: Essays on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art Theory and Criticism. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2013. Reproduced: Fig. 3-1, p. 67
    Stokstad, Marilyn, and Michael Watt Cothren. Art History. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Reproduced: Fig. 25-12, p. 805
    Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 107
    Museu de Arte de Macau. Nan zong bei dou: Dong Qichang shu hua xue shu yan tao hui lun wen ji = 南宗北斗: 董其昌书画学术研讨会论文集. Beijing: Gu gong chu ban she, 2015. Mentioned: p. 398
    Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015. Reproduced: pp. 308–313
    Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Musuem of Art, 2015. Reproduced: pp. 308–313
    Shanghai Museum. Dan qing bao fa: Dong Qichang shu hua yi shu te ji [丹青寶筏: 董其昌書畫藝術特集 = Freeyman of the ink world: Dong Qichang's calligraphy and painting art]. Shanghai: Shanghai shu hua chu ban she, 2018. Mentioned and reproduced: vol. 2, pp. 138–139
    Sullivan, Michael, and S. J. Vainker. The Arts of China. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 241–242
    Giuffrida, Noelle. Separating Sheep from Goats: Sherman E. Lee and Chinese Art Collecting in Postwar America. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018. Reproduced: p. 171, fig. 98
  • The Arts of Dong Qichang. Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China (organizer) (December 7, 2018-March 10, 2019).
    Chinese Landscape Duets of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 12, 2015-February 7, 2016).
    Streams and Mountains Without End: Asian Art and the Legacy of Sherman E. Lee at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 27-August 23, 2009).
    Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 119). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (March 12, 2003-July 16, 2003).
    Highlights of Asian Paintings from The Cleveland Museum of Art. Nara National Museum (organizer) (February 21-March 29, 1998); Suntory Museum of Art (April 28-June 21, 1998).
    Mountains, Rocks, and Water: Landscape Painting in Asia. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 2-December 13, 1987).
    Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).
    Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 11-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982); The Asia Society Museum, New York, NY (December 3, 1982-February 28, 1983).
    The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1979).
    Fantastics and Eccentrics. Asia House Gallery, New York, NY (March 23-May 28, 1967).
    1000 Jahre Chinesische Malerei. Haus der Kunst, Munich, Mùnich, Germany (organizer) (October 16-December 13, 1959).
  • {{cite web|title=Mt. Qingbian|url=false|author=Dong Qichang|year=1617|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1980.10