Autumn Mountains, for Jichang (Chi-ch'ang)

Fans offer painters a more intimate, and sometimes less formal, format than that of scrolls. Many antique fan paintings were immediately mounted onto album pages, but some—like this one—have fold marks to indicate that they were used before being laid flat. The Manchuria-born artist Tang Dai received the title of “Number One Painter” from the Kangxi emperor. By the time he painted this fan, he was serving Kangxi’s successor as a veteran court artist. The poem at the top is dedicated to a friend who was leaving for a distant post. It extends the wish that when the friend opens the fan, he will feel that he is once again face to face with the artist.