Skip Navigation

Nightfall in the Gobi

Mansheng Wang

Asian Art

About these two paintings, Wang Mansheng has written:
I strove to capture the moment when daylight turns toward night. Night scenes are uncommon in traditional Chinese landscape painting. But for me, that moment of waning light in the mountains, as the poet Tao Yuanming (born 365 C.E.) described it in a poem, when the air is fresh and the birds are returning to their roosts, is magical.
Wang’s paintings refer to classical Chinese themes and the traditional handscroll format, but he uses unique materials. These include homemade ink made from crushed walnut shells, for color that is then combined with acrylic paint, as well as cardboard, instead of the customary soft and absorbent handmade paper, to support the painting. Nightfall in the Gobi depicts the sand dunes engulfing the ancient Buddhist cave-chapels located at Dunhuang in northwestern China, deep in the desert along the paths that camel caravans traversed, known as the Silk Road.
ARTIST Mansheng Wang
MEDIUM Chinese ink, tempera, acrylic on cardboard
DATES 2009
DIMENSIONS 4 x 24 in. (10.2 x 61 cm) frame: 9 3/4 × 29 3/4 × 2 1/8 in. (24.8 × 75.6 × 5.4 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS Asian Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2014.36.2
CREDIT LINE Gift in honor of Betty Jean Kolenda
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Mansheng Wang. Nightfall in the Gobi, 2009. Chinese ink, tempera, acrylic on cardboard, 4 x 24 in. (10.2 x 61 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift in honor of Betty Jean Kolenda, 2014.36.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2014.36.2_PS9.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 2014.36.2_PS9.jpg., 2019
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT © Mansheng Wang
The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.
Mansheng Wang. <em>Nightfall in the Gobi</em>, 2009. Chinese ink, tempera, acrylic on cardboard, 4 x 24 in. (10.2 x 61 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift in honor of Betty Jean Kolenda, 2014.36.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2014.36.2_PS9.jpg)