KUO HSI

flourished c. 1060, 80; b. Wen-hsien, Lo-yang Province, China Pinyin Guo Xi one of the most famous artists of the Northern Sung period in China. Kuo Hsi's collected notes on landscape painting, Lin-ch'uan kao-chih (Lofty Record of Forests and Streams), describes with much detail the purposes and techniques of painting and is a valuable aid to the understanding of the landscape painting of the Northern Sung Dynasty. Few of his paintings have survived; among the works that may be considered authentic are the famous Early Spring of 1072 (in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan), which is dated 1072, and a handscroll entitled The Coming of Autumn (in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Both effectively capture the quality of their seasonal interests and are paramount examples of the Sung accomplishment, which balanced pictorial description with the expressive brush to provide, as Kuo Hsi himself wrote, landscapes in which one may physically and mentally ramble.