Ma Yüan

Ma Yüan (mä yüän), fl. c.1190–1225, Chinese painter of the Sung dynasty and foremost of the Ma family of painters. He became one of the most important landscape painters of the 12th and 13th cent., the other being Hsia Kuei. He was known for his "one-cornered" compositions, in which dramatic effect was achieved by crisp, forceful brushstrokes, asymmetrical arrangement of elements, and drastic elimination of all but essentials. Attribution of his works is difficult because many later painters followed his style and because toward the end of his life he collaborated with his son Ma Lin, often signing his own name to his son's works. Landscape with Willows (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston) is generally attributed to Ma Yüan, as are album leaves in the Cleveland Museum of Art and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

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Ma Yuan

 or Ma Yüan

(born c. 1160/65, Qiantang, Zhejiang province—died 1225) Chinese landscape painter. Born into a family of court painters, Ma Yuan began his career under the emperor Xiaozong, became daizhao (“painter-in-attendance”) under Emperor Guangzong, and received the highest honour, the Golden Belt, under Emperor Ningzong. Apart from these facts, little is known about Ma's life. He occasionally painted flowers and figure subjects, but it was in landscape painting that his genius lay. He executed a number of large landscape screens, all of which are now lost. He also painted tall hanging scrolls depicting steep mountains with streams, waterfalls, and vigorously yet elegantly rendered pine trees. In many of his works, the mountains are pushed to one side, creating a “one corner” composition; between the distant mountains and the foreground rocks, where a scholar may be sitting, lies an expanse of empty space with a suggestion of mist or water. Ma's style was popular with late Song painters, and it is often difficult to distinguish his works from those of his followers. The romantic landscape style of Ma and his contemporary Xia Gui inspired a school of painting that came to be known as the Ma-Xia school, characterized by asymmetrical compositions with simplified ink tones and angular brushstrokes.

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Ma Yüan 

(Ch’in-shan). Born in the late 12th century; died in the first half of the 13th century, in the province of Shansi. Chinese painter. Active at the academy of painting in Hangchou.

A follower of Li T’ang, Ma Yuan painted landscapes (Solitary Fisherman on the River in Cold Weather, National Museum, Tokyo) and works in the “flowers and birds” genre (Plum Blossoms, Stones, and Wild Ducks in a Mountain Stream, Ku-kung Museum, Peking). Ma Yiian’s landscapes, monochromatic and tinted, profoundly reflect a philosophical conception of nature as a single and infinite world; they are characterized by a contemplative mood imbued with restrained excitement. Ma Yuan made wide use of new techniques in Chinese painting, such as asymmetrical composition (“off-center landscape”) and bold, broad strokes (“great blows with an ax”).

REFERENCES

Nikolaeva, N. S. Khudozhnik, poet, filosof: Ma Yuan’ i ego vremia. Moscow, 1968.
Chang An-chih. Ma Yuan, Hsia Kuei. Peking, 1959.