| The focus of this dissertation is Guo Xi (b. after 1000 A.D., d. before 1100), a painter considered to be one of the greatest in the history of China. At the heart of the thesis is my confirmation of a handscroll named Old Trees, Level Distance in The Metropolitan Museum of Art to be a work by Guo. Its historical context is elucidated with textual documentation, a group of poems written by Guo's contemporaries as colophons to his level-distance landscape handscrolls painted in the last decade of his life. The authors of the poems were pivotal statesmen of the Northern Song period (960-1127), Su Shi (1037-1101) and his circle of friends.; As leading imperial painter at Emperor Shenzong's (r. 1068-1085) court, Guo Xi fulfilled commissions with large-scale ink landscapes for an architectural and public context. The spectacular Early Spring in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is our best surviving example of his monumental work. My research has ascertained that Guo also made intimate paintings for his personal patrons after the death of the Emperor. These were shared between friends, and therefore had a social and private function. The Metropolitan handscroll, a small, autumnal scene, is likely such a work. The discovery of an intimate facet to Guo Xi's production changes our expectations of his artistic life.; The issue of art historical transition in the late eleventh century is addressed here with further knowledge about Guo Xi's oeuvre. The organizing principles of monumentality and intimacy define Guo's two modes of work, as well as offer a framework for understanding Northern Song landscape as an increasingly important site of political authority and as a social medium of self-expression. This diversification of function is attributable to the rising status of painters and painting in public and private spheres during an era of institutional reform and political change. Avenues established for artisan-officers in the Academy system to achieve closer physical and rank proximity to the civil service, and the court's cultivation and preservation of cultural traditions like that embodied by the Li Cheng landscape lineage, in turn enhanced imperial prestige. The intimate scene (xiaojing) emerged in this context as a new category of landscape alongside the mainstream of court art, explored as the medium of artists across the class board---professional, aristocratic, and literati alike. Landscape was soon entrusted with personal and profound confidences. |
