Juran () ( fl. 10th century) was a Chinese

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

of the late

Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (), from 907 to 979, was an era of political upheaval and division in 10th-century Imperial China. Five dynastic states quickly succeeded one another in the Central Plain, and more than a dozen concu ...

and early

Northern Song Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a r ...

periods. Very little is known about Juran's life, and not even his family name is known (Juran is his Buddhist name). He was a native of Chiang-Ning and worked at the

Southern Tang Southern Tang () was a state in Southern China that existed during Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, which proclaimed itself to be the successor of the former Tang dynasty. The capital was located at Nanjing in present-day Jiangsu Province ...

court in Jinling (today

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

). Around 975

Li Houzhu Li Yu (; 937 – 15 August 978), before 961 known as Li Congjia (), also known as Li Houzhu (; literally "Last Ruler Li" or "Last Lord Li"), was the third rulerUnlike his father and grandfather, Li Yu never ruled as an emperor. His official titl ...

, the ruler of Southern Tang, surrendered to the Northern Song dynasty. Like many, he and his court were to move to the new capital, Bianjing (now

Kaifeng Kaifeng () is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is best known for having been the Chinese capital during the Nort ...

); Juran went with them. He lived and worked at the K'ai-pao Buddhist temple in Bianjing, but quickly rose to prominence as landscape painter. There are a few works that have been attributed to him on various grounds: two

hanging scroll A hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit East Asian painting and calligraphy. The hanging scroll was displayed in a room for appreciation; it is to be distinguished from the handscroll, which was narrower and ...

s in the collection of the

National Palace Museum The National Palace Museum (; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Kwet-li̍p kù-kiung pok-vu̍t-yèn), is a museum in Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan). It has a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of Chinese artifacts and artworks, many of which wer ...

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

(''Storied Mountains and Dense Forests'' and ''Xiao Getting the Orchid Pavilion Scroll by Deception''), and one hanging scroll in the collection of the

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

(''Buddhist Monastery by Streams and Mountains''). All these works show influence of

Dong Yuan Dong Yuan (, Gan: dung3 ngion4; c. 934 – c. 962) was a Chinese painter. He was born in Zhongling (钟陵; present-day Jinxian County, Jiangxi Province).Cihai: Page 599. Dong Yuan was active in the Southern Tang Kingdom of the Five Dynasties a ...

's style of rounded contours and soft brushstrokes, but no sign of the older painter's horizontal, level-distance

landscape format Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are ''portrait'' and ''landscape''. The term "portrait orientation" comes from visual art terminology and describes ...

. According to contemporary sources, Juran also painted a wall painting, ''Morning Scenery of Haze and Mist'', very highly regarded by the artists of the time, but this work is lost.

Gallery

File:Juran - Xiao Getting the Orchid Pavilion Scroll by Deception.jpg , ''Xiao Getting the Orchid Pavilion Scroll by Deception''
144.1 × 59.6 cm,

File:Juran - Buddhist Monastery by Streams and Mountains.jpg , ''Buddhist Monastery by Streams and Mountains''
185.4 × 57.5 cm,

File:Juran. Seeking the Tao in Autumn Mountains. Palace museum, Tapei.10 cent..jpg , ''Seeking the Tao in Autumn Mountains''
156 x 77.5 cm,

References

* Ci hai bian ji wei yuan hui (辞海编辑委员会) Ci hai (辞海). Shanghai: Shanghai ci shu chu ban she (上海辞书出版社), 1979. * 林茨. ''The art of Chinese painting'' (''Cultural China'' series), 2006.

External links

Juran Painting Gallery
at China Online Museum
Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717)
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Juran (see index) Southern Tang painters Song dynasty landscape painters Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms landscape painters 10th-century Chinese painters Buddhist artists {{China-painter-stub

Gallery

See also

References

External links