Three Treasures in the National Palace Museum

Landscape painting matured during the Northern Song dynasty when its style was further developed by new creative approaches. With only a few extant landscape works from the period, Travelers Among Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan, Early Spring by Guo Xi, and Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys by Li Tang have survived for hundreds of years, offering viewers a chance to appreciate the delicate landscape paintings of the Northern Song era, now acclaimed as the “Three Treasures in the National Palace Museum.”

The three paintings are famously called the “Three Seminal Masterpieces” (Ju Bei, literally “gigantic monuments”) of the Northern Song period, suggesting their strong influence on Chinese landscape painting as well as the centrality of the middle enormous mountain peaks in these paintings’ composition. The three masterpieces are unique in that they are hanging scrolls, a traditional way of displaying Chinese painting. Given their size, designing a proper composition for hanging scrolls is a time-consuming and physically taxing job and thus poses more challenges to the painter,

in contrast to smaller albums and hand scrolls. Moreover, Early Spring and Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys are early pieces with inscriptions that include dates, thus providing useful information that helps place these works in their wider historical context and providing a unique window on the heyday of Northern Song landscape painting.

Northern Song landscape painters embraced a specific ideal in their creations; they sought to paint fascinating works that not only featured natural scenery like mountains and rivers, but also built a surreal world that revealed deep thought and an unbridled imagination. Landscape painting during the Northern Song era reached heights of sophistication and excellence, with these three masterpieces being hailed as having the greatest significance.

Paper lasts for one thousand years, whereas silk has a lifespan of only eight hundred years. To protect Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, Early Spring, and Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys from rapid degradation and fading, the three masterpieces are only displayed at regular intervals of three years to ensure they survive for future generations to study and appreciate. Currently, the National Palace Museum has about 70 calligraphic works and paintings that are exhibited for just 40 days every three years. (Ordinary exhibits are showcased for three months every one-and-a-half years).

●Early Spring | 62 inches x 42.5 inches by Guo Xi | Song dynasty | National Palace Museum, Taipei

In the middle of the left-hand side, a small line in clerical script reads, Early Spring by Guo Xi in the year of Zen Zi,” revealing the work was created in 1072. Early Spring was acclaimed as another milestone in Northern Song landscape painting, on par with Travelers Among Mountains and Streams. Fan Kuan shows the solemn and eternal characteristics of nature, whereas Guo Xi captures the fleeting and ephemeral landscapes of the four seasons, suggesting the mountain rocks with “cloud-like texture strokes” while depicting the forests with “crab claw strokes.” is masterpiece emanates a misty feeling with hints of innite vitality in the universe.

●Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys | 74 inches x 55 inches by Li Tang | Song dynasty | National Palace Museum, Taipei

Another Northern Song landscape painting masterpiece, following Travelers Among Mountains and Streams and Early Spring, this work takes landscape painting to a glorious new level. Above the distant main steep precipice is a line that reads, “By Li Tang, a native of Heyang, in the spring of the year of Jia Chen, Song Emperor’s Xuanhe era.” It was 1124, the sixth year of the Xuanhe era of Northern Song Emperor Huizong, when Li Tang was already in his later years. Nonetheless, time had not hampered his talent and the work he created at the time displays a stunning, magnicent atmosphere. e painting employs the kao yuan (high distance) method – one of the three unique perspectives employed in Chinese painting, depicting the mountains as they would be viewed upward from below –and manifests a solemn and stately quality. However, Li Tang enlarges the forests in the foreground while shrinking the main peaks in the background so that the pinewoods are visually closer to the viewer, thus achieving a more reasonable composition. ough adopting the styles of his forerunners, Li Tang pioneered panoramic landscape painting, a style that later became popular in the Southern Song dynasty.

●Travelers Amid Mountains and Streams | 81 inches x 40.5 inches by Fan Kuan | Song dynasty | National Palace Museum, Taipei

This work has three distinct sections, with a big rock in the center of the foreground, a mule train in the middleground, and a towering central peak in the background. A mist shrouding the mountainside creates an atmosphere that imbues the painting with a distant and spacious feeling. All the subjects are outlined by angular lines of ink, with short raindrop-like texture strokes vividly suggesting the textures of the rocks. The commanding, enormous mountains sharply contrast with the mule train on the road. The masterpiece bears the signature of Fan Kuan, found in the shade of the trees in the lower right corner.

Distant and Enormous Mountains Confer Eternity and Stability to a Composition

Without records of Fan Kuan’s birth and death, we only know he was born in the late years of the Five Dynasties (c. A.D. 907-960) and was active during the early period of the Northern Song dynasty (c. A.D. 960-1126). Song Dynasty art critics praised Fan Kuan’s work. For example, Experiences in Painting lists the painter, along with Li Cheng and Guan Tong, as one of the three landscape painting luminaries. A Critique on Famous Song Paintings hails his works as divine creations, and History of Painting even writes that Fan Kuan “is second to none in terms of artistry in our dynasty.” The dozen of stamps on Travelers Among Mountains and Streams gives us a timeline of its hundred-year-old history inside and outside of the Song imperial court. Later, following its addition to the Qing imperial collection, the masterpiece successively bore the seals of emperors Qianlong, Jiaqing, Xuantong, and Puyi, the last ruler of imperial China.

● Sophisticated sculpting and painting techniques were applied to reflect the grand style of these precious paintings and show the immense natural landscape of the “Three Treasures in the National Palace Museum.”

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams clearly encompasses the perspective of three planes – foreground, middleground, and background – creating a perfect, magnificent scene. The masterpiece primarily emphasizes the grandeur of mountain rocks, a departure from earlier examples of Chinese landscape art that generally depict peaks as a backdrop. With the paintings’ overall dimensions of 81 inches x 40.5 inches, the towering central peak in the background occupies two-thirds of the composition, making it a commanding presence. As the featured subject, the lofty precipice in the background offers stability and its expanse gives a sense of eternity. Moreover, the mountains in the middle, divided by a stream, are covered by meticulously depicted leafy scrub trees of varied types. Giving this work of art its title, the painting also features a westbound mule train driven by two travelers on the road.

● There are different methods of showing the shades and texture of rocks and mountains by light ink strokes.

Some critics consider the foreground, middleground, and background perspectives as a representation of a harmonious co-existence between humankind, heaven, and nature. The travelers and mules carrying loads in the foreground symbolize the world of mortals. Behind the trees in the middle, the Taoist priests in robes reveal human efforts to seek enlightenment. Finally, the mountains in the background represent the everlasting universe observing sentient beings.

A Re-interpretation of Time-honored Cultural Treasures through Porcelain Artistry

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, Early Spring, and Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys are a living testament to the influence of aesthetics on human development throughout history. Therefore, FRANZ draws on the “Three Treasures in the National Palace Museum,” overcoming the challenges of crafting in porcelain to achieve a dramatic rendering of the three magnificent masterpieces in a fashionable manner.

To properly render a magnificent vista, the designers, sculptors, and painters delved into ancient texts and realized that the three masterpieces actually employ the traditional “texture stroke” technique, each in their own way. Therefore, FRANZ adopted a different approach to create porcelain vases. Specifically, the “Early Spring” vase contains a solid roughcast, with powerful knife-carved patterns as well as light, delicate sculptural touches and gradient washes of hues recreate the sense of the viewing the scene through a mist. In addition to appreciating the appealing piece’s skillful depiction of the clouds and their distinct texture, the collector will be greeted with a view where the spring valleys have traded snow for blossoms, while the distant mountains remain shrouded in mist. Next, the “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams” vase features “raindrop texture” showing the compact substance and lines of the mountain rocks – a concerted effort by the sculptors and painters who meticulously made raindrop chisel marks to present the strong and solid mountain rocks.

The “Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys” vase features “ax-cut texture,” created by powerful and rapid dry strokes that give the rocks a powerful presence. Therefore, the eponymous vase also shows stunning, ingenious innovation in terms of sculpture and painting.

The “Three Treasures in the National Palace Museum” vases use a variety of sculpting and painting techniques to vividly present a magnificent perspective and recreate in porcelain the textures of the mountain rocks, shade-to-light brushstrokes, and washes of ink that are evocative of traditional Chinese landscape painting. The final results are incredible natural scenes captured for eternity through classic porcelain artworks. 

FZ03558 Three Treasures Porcelain Vases