In this work Dong Qichang has created a highly original and revolutionary work. Dong Qichang inscribed this painting in elegant calligraphy, which says that he painted the landscape to give it as a present to a friend, a scholar-official. The inscription translates: `In the dingsi year (1617), the 15th day of the 9th (lunar) month, I painted (wrote) this as a gift for the envoy Xuayin in the Lezhi garden at Wulin’.In this arid, lofty landscape, Dong consciously renounces decoration, narrative interest and display of technical skill, which were characteristic of paintings by professional and court painters. It reflects the ideals of scholar-amateur painting – unassuming, bland (pingdan) (subtle), childlike awkwardness and concealment of brilliance.The human figure, a reminder of the banal and dusty world, is also excluded. In their place, Dong emphasises the tonal and textural gradations of ink and the dynamic movements of form and line, abstract qualities found in calligraphy, and regarded by Chinese scholars as the highest form of visual art. The austere, solitary, semi-abstract landscape does not so much represent an actual place as express the artist’s inner spiritual world. The uppermost mountain peak seems punctured by a blank hole, as if torn away from the landmass, creating a disturbing dissonance in the landscape.The close relationship between calligraphy and painting is illustrated by Dong’s comment on nature and art:Painting is not equal to ‘mountains-and-streams’ for the wonder of scenery; but `mountains-and-streams’ are not equal to painting for the sheer marvels of brush and ink. (Dong Qichang quoted in Mae Anna Pang, Mountains and Streams from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2006, p.51)Text by Dr Mae Anna Pang © National Gallery of Victoria, Australia