Fan Kuan

Fan Kuan, whose given name was Fan Zhongzheng, lived as a recluse in the mountains of Shaanxi in the early Northern Song. He is said to have given up copying earlier masters in order to learn directly from nature. His towering hanging scroll Travellers among Mountains and Streams, perhaps his only surviving work, set the ideal of monumental landscape: a vast cliff face above a tiny mule train. His signature, hidden among the foliage, was only rediscovered in 1958.