Dŏng Yuán (董源) (c.934 - c.962) was a Chinese painter.

He was born in Zhongling . Dong Yuan was active in the Southern Tang Kingdom of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. He was from Nanjing in the Jiangsu province, 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 9 centuries. He and his pupil Ju Ran were the founders of the southern school of landscape painting and with Jing Hao and Guan Tong of the northern school constituted the four seminal painters of that time.

As with many artists in China, his profession was as an official where he studied the existing styles of Li Sixun and Wang Wei. However, he added to the number of techniques, including more sophisticated perspective, use of pointillism and crosshatching to build up vivid effect.

One of his most famous paintings is The Xiao and Xiang Rivers, which demonstrates these techniques, and his sense of composition: note how the clouds break the background mountains into a central pyramid composition and a secondary pyramid, by softening the mountain line, he makes the immobile effect more pronounced. Not also how the inlet as well, by breaking the landscape into groups makes the serenity of the foreground more pronouced, instead of simply being a border to the composition, it is a space of its own, which the intrusion of a boat on the far right fills, even though it is tiny compared to the mountains. Left of center, he uses his unusual brush stroke techniques - later copied in countless paintings, to give a strong sense of folliage to the trees, which contrasts with the rounded waves of stone that make up the mountains themselves. this gives the painting a more distinct middle ground, and makes the mountains have that sense of aura and distance which gives them a greater granduer and personality. Note also his use of "face like" patterns in the mountain on the right.

External link

• The Xiao and Xiang Rivers