Description

Two anglers wearing flat straw hats stand on the rocks of a foaming riverbed, their long rods stretched far out over the water. Around them glows the fresh green of a maple, behind which a pine with a reddish trunk reaches into the picture, and out of the golden haze above, forested rock spires rise upward.

The color composition is remarkable: the entire background is laid out in warm golden ochre, against which the cool greens and blues of the vegetation and the white crests of foam on the water stand out clearly. Small white dabs of color on rocks and branches add further points of light and lend the scene a subtle shimmer. The long rods of the two anglers cut across the picture plane as fine diagonals, binding shore and water together.

Fishing scenes are among the most popular staffage motifs of East Asian landscape painting; they represent a simple life in harmony with nature and at the same time lend the monumental backdrop a human scale. Signature and red seal are found at the lower right. Executed as a silkscreen print on silk, this hanging scroll, Angler at Wild Water Beneath Misty Cliffs, is a strikingly vivid and colorful piece.