Ma Yuan

Ma Yuan was a Chinese painter of the Song dynasty. He was born in Hangzhou in 1160 and died in 1225, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art gives his active years as about 1190 to 1225. Those years fall within the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279).

Ma Yuan’s paintings, together with those of Xia Gui, became the foundation of what is called the Ma-Xia school of painting. Their works are counted among the finest of the period. Ma Yuan’s painting later inspired Chinese artists of the Zhe school, and also the early Japanese painters Shūbun and Sesshū.

His works include Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring. Paintings by Ma Yuan are held by the National Palace Museum, the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Princeton Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The work shown here, Scholar viewing a waterfall, is an album leaf painted in ink and color on silk. The Met dates it to the early thirteenth century and places it in China during the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279). As its title says, it shows a scholar looking at a waterfall, and trees also appear in the scene. The painted image measures 9 7/8 by 10 1/4 inches (25.1 by 26 centimeters).

The leaf was once in the collection of the C. C. Wang family. It came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973 as a gift of the Dillon Fund and is part of the museum’s Asian Art department.