Chinese Shan Shui Silk Hanging Scroll. Depicts a gorgeous waterfall leading to a peaceful river, beside which sits a contemplative scholar with a book under a sparse tree, with the unique perspective making him the focal point suggesting this is a more contemporary variant. The kanji upper left roughly translates to "Noble Scholar in the Autumn Mountains." Framed with a hanging wire on the back. 

Overall Size: 49 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 39 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. 

Shan shui is a traditional Chinese landscape painting style that emerged around the 5th Century, influenced by Daoist and Neo-Confucian philosophies. The name translates to “mountain-water,” and the style depicts idealized natural scenes, emphasizing mountains, rivers, and waterfalls, usually following specific compositional rules. The scope and length of the images, sometimes split into diptychs, triptychs, or greater, is a further part of the large scale implied in the form, with human figures usually very small and alone, or even completely absent. All shan shui paintings follow rigid sets of requirements regarding balance, composition, and form, with three basic components: Pathways must never be straight and meander like a stream, there is a clearly defined Threshold the path leads to (often the mountain), and the Heart (focal point) of the painting that all elements, paths, and lines lead to defines the meaning of the painting. Shan shui reached the zenith of its popularity in the Tang Dynasty, when a specific form using deep greens and blues emerged, but it remains a popular subject even into modern times.

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