Artist:Mansheng Wang
Medium: Chinese ink, tempera, acrylic on cardboard
Dates:2012
Dimensions: 9 3/4 x 43 1/2 x 1/16 in. (24.8 x 110.5 x 0.2 cm) frame: 16 1/2 × 50 1/4 × 2 1/8 in. (41.9 × 127.6 × 5.4 cm)
Collections:
Exhibitions:
Accession Number: 2014.36.1
Image: 2014.36.1_PS9.jpg,
Catalogue Description: Oblong painting of mountain peaks at twilight. Two artist's seals on the right and left sides. Artist's signature on top right just above one of the seals. No other inscriptions. About these two paintings [2014.3.1, 2014.3.2], Wang Mansheng has written: I strove to capture the moment when daylight turns into night. Night scenes are uncommon in traditional Chinese landscape painting. But for me, that moment of waning light in the mountains, as the poet Tao Yuanming (born 365 C.E.) described it in a poem, when the air is fresh and the birds are returning to their roosts, is magical. Wang's paintings refer to classical Chinese themes and the traditional handscroll format, but he uses unique materials. These include homemade ink made by boiling walnuts (husks and meat). He then uses the ink together with acrylic paint, on cardboard instead of the customary soft and absorbent handmade paper. Nightfall in the Gobi depicts the sand dunes engulfing the ancient Buddhist cave-chapels located at Dunhuang in northwestern China, deep in the desert along the paths that camel caravans traversed, known as the Silk Road.