A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains (“Qianli jiagshan Tu” in Chinese) is a blue and green landscape painting by Song master Wang Ximeng (1096–1119). This scroll, depicts China’s beautiful mountains, architecture, people and animals along rivers, is 11.9 meters long and was one of the largest in Chinese history. Surrounded by vast rivers, the ridges and peaks stretch up and down. Because of its precision, gorgeous colors and exquisite strokes, the scroll is regarded as one of the greatest works of the Song Dynasty’s blue and green landscape paintings, and also one of the ten greatest works of Chinese art.

In this unique work, Wang made full use of the multi-point perspective, the feature of traditional painting scroll, to divide the scroll into six parts. Each part focuses on depicting various mountains, and each of them is connected with bridges or a watercourse. Visually, it makes each part of the landscapes independent and correlative, developing various landscapes with changing viewpoints. At the same time, figures are tiny, but their dynamic status is permanently captured in the picture. Even ripples are drawn stroke by stroke with fishing boats wandering on the water. From the overall perspective, the scroll has a magnificent vigor, and it’s an amazing work whether viewed from afar or from close range.

As a permanent collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing, the masterpiece, which has only previously been shown four times, all in the past century, will be displayed in two days time, on September 15. Apart from the scroll, other magnificent blue and green landscape paintings of past dynasties will also be displayed. The exhibition will run until December 14. So grab the great chance to enjoy these rare Chinese landscape paintings!