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Old Trees, Level Distance

Guo Xi, ca. 1080. China, Northern Song dynasty.

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Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A long ink landscape on silk with gnarled trees growing from rocks, small figures walking toward a bridge, and a flat misty distance of water and hills.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Guo Xi was a court painter who also wrote about painting. He described three kinds of distance in landscape: looking up at a peak, looking deep into a valley, and looking out across a flat expanse. This handscroll is about the third, which he called level distance. Gnarled old trees grow from rocks near a stream, and two old men walk with their attendants toward a bridge, perhaps to meet friends. Beyond them the land falls away toward water, where fishermen are at work, and then fades into mist. The painting asks you to unroll it slowly, a section at a time, and move through it at the pace of a walk.

Look closely

  1. Find the two old men and follow where they are walking.
  2. Look at the trees. Are any two branches alike?
  3. Find the farthest thing you can see before the mist takes over.

While you sit

Two old friends are taking a slow walk. Walk with them, without needing to arrive.

Your seat in the galleries: a long, low slate slab on ash blocks, at the height of a riverbank.

About the work

Title
Old Trees, Level Distance
Artist
Guo Xi
Date
ca. 1080
From
China, Northern Song dynasty
Medium
Handscroll; ink and color on silk
Size
Image: 14 × 41 1/8 in. (35.6 × 104.4 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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