Ранняя весна

Guo Xi painted this in 1072 as a court artist to Emperor Shenzong, whose reign was consumed by the fierce reforms of his chief minister Wang Anshi, an argument about how tightly the state should be run. Guo Xi had his own view of order. In his writings he compared a landscape to a well-governed realm: the tall central mountain is the ruler, the lesser peaks and pines the officials arranged around him. Here that great mountain rises through drifting mist, thawing after winter, and the eye is led up and around it from several viewpoints at once, a method he called the angle of totality. Look for the tiny travelers and fishermen at the base, going about ordinary business beneath the vast slope.