On a Mountain Path in Spring

A scholar pauses on a path, his servant trailing behind, while a willow leans overhead and a tiny bird flits off into a vast, empty expanse of pale silk. Ma Yuan earned the nickname 'one-corner Ma' for compositions like this, where figures and detail huddle in a single corner and the rest is left as open air and water - the void doing as much work as the brush. A couplet by the empress is inscribed at upper right. Where Northern Song landscape overwhelmed with mass, this Southern Song album leaf distills it to lyric quiet.