Dong Yuan

Dong Yuan
Detail from Xiao and Xiang Rivers, permanent collection at the Palace Museum. This painting is often considered to be one of Dong Yuan's greatest masterpieces, and it "illustrates the revolutionary impressionism" he had achieved by "means of broken ink washes and the elimination of the outline."[1]
Born	c. 932 Nanjing
Died	c. 962
Nationality	Chinese
Known for	Painting
Movement	Southern Tang, Jiangnan style

Dong Yuan (Chinese: 董源; pinyin: Dǒng Yuán; Wade–Giles: Tung Yüan, Gan: dung3 ngion4; c. 934 – c. 962) was a Chinese painter.

He was born in Zhongling (钟陵; present-day Jinxian County, Jiangxi Province).^[2] Dong Yuan was active in the Southern Tang Kingdom of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. He was from Nanjing, which was a center for culture and the arts.

He was known for both figure and landscape paintings, and exemplified the elegant style which would become the standard for brush painting in China for the next nine centuries. He and his pupil Juran (巨然) were the founders of the Southern style of landscape painting, known as the Jiangnan Landscape style. Together with Jing Hao and Guan Tong of the Northern style they constituted the four seminal painters of that time.

As with many artists in China, his profession was as an official, here he studied the existing styles of Li Sixun and Wang Wei. However, he added to these masters' techniques; he included more sophisticated perspective.