Mountain Cottage with Large Tree c. 1630

Cheng Jiasui made this landscape with ink on paper, sometime in the late Ming Dynasty. It's a humble set of materials, but of course, the simplicity is deceptive. Note how the artist coaxes so much atmosphere out of what is essentially diluted black pigment. There's no erasing here, no going back. Every mark has to count. Cheng Jiasui was part of a literati tradition, a scholarly elite who mastered calligraphy and painting as twin disciplines. The monochrome palette has a lot to do with this sensibility. Think of the artist working patiently at his desk, grinding ink stick against stone, preparing his brush, and visualizing the landscape before him. This wasn't just a painting; it was an act of self-cultivation, a way of attuning oneself to the rhythms of nature. It's a world away from the noisy, clamorous workshops of European painting at the time. And yet, both traditions ask us to consider the labor, the history, and the social context embedded in every stroke.