Lan Ying Art Prints

Lan Ying (Chinese, 1585-c. 1664)

8 museum-quality prints of works by Lan Ying, each made to order on archival paper and shipped to your wall.

Lan Ying (1585–c. 1664), born in Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, was among the most accomplished professional painters of the late Ming dynasty. Where the era’s literati tastemakers, led by Dong Qichang, tended to dismiss professionals for virtuoso display, Lan won their regard, adopting their practice of composing albums in homage to the old masters while retaining his own vigorous brush. His work moves fluently through the canonical styles of the Song and Yuan dynasties.

The eight album leaves here, Landscape in the Style of Ancient Masters (ink and color on paper, first half of the seventeenth century), exemplify this learned mode: individual leaves follow Gao Kegong’s cloudy mountains, the dense textures of Wang Meng, the spare riverbanks of Ni Zan, and the manners of Cao Zhibo and Fang Congyi. Such albums were not copies but conversations — demonstrations that a painter’s originality could be measured by how inventively he inhabited the styles of the past.