Landscape after Xia Gui (active ca. 1195–1230), from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting 1679

Wang Gai made this woodblock print, "Landscape after Xia Gui," in seventeenth-century China as part of "The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting." It was designed as a guide for aspiring artists, and it gives us insight into the traditional methods of art instruction at the time. The image is a copy of a landscape painting by the Song dynasty artist Xia Gui, a leading member of the so-called Zhe School of painting which was associated with the court. By the 17th century this style was seen as conservative. But the printing of such a manual was part of a broader attempt by sophisticated scholar-artists to resist what they saw as the vulgarization of painting by commercial forces. To fully understand this image, we need to look at the history of Chinese painting academies, the economics of the art market, and the literati’s traditional concern with distinguishing themselves from artisans. The meaning of this landscape is contingent on its social and institutional context.