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How did Li Tang change the earlier Northern Song landscape tradition?
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Xia Gui
Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains, detail of hand scroll in ink and paper by Xia Gui, early 13th century (Southern Song); in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan.
Li Tang was a pivotal figure who bridged the gap between the monumental landscape tradition of the Northern Song and the more lyrical, refined style of the Southern Song. While he remained a master within the tradition of Fan Kuan, he fundamentally transformed the earlier Northern Song approach in several key ways:1
- Refinement of Composition: Li Tang gradually reduced the overwhelming monumentality characteristic of Northern Song landscapes, favoring more refined and delicate compositional structures.2
- Innovation in Brushwork: He moved away from the small, stippled "raindrop" texture strokes used by earlier masters like Fan Kuan. In their place, he perfected the broader, more tactile "ax-cut" texture stroke.12
This ax-cut technique became a hallmark of Southern Song academy painting, providing a sense of precise, comprehensive reality to painted rocks. By supervising the reestablishment of the northern artistic tradition at the Southern Song court in Hangzhou, Li Tang provided the stylistic foundation for the later Ma-Xia school, which included artists such as Xia Gui.12