# Twin Pines, Level Distance > Zhao Mengfu - ca. 1310 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/zhao-mengfu/zhao-mengfu-twin-pines-level-distance/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Zhao Mengfu - **Date:** ca. 1310 - **Medium:** Handscroll, ink on paper - **Dimensions:** Image 26.8 x 107.5 cm (10 9/16 x 42 5/16 in); overall with mounting 27.8 x 781.5 cm (10 15/16 in x 25 ft. 7 11/16 in) - **Object type:** Painting - **Period:** Chinese, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) - **Current location:** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Asian Art - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A nearly bare handscroll, ink on paper only, two pine trees and a stretch of empty water, painted around 1310 by Zhao Mengfu: a Song prince by birth who served the Mongol Yuan court that had ended his family's dynasty, and who used scrolls like this one to argue, in his own words written on the paper, for a return to painting styles centuries older than the Southern Song academy manner he had grown up around. Two of his own inscriptions, a near-contemporary colophon by Yang Zai, and a fifteenth-century colophon that directly addresses his conflicted position as a Yuan official of Song blood, sit on the scroll alongside twenty-three collectors' seals reaching from a Ming general through the Qing imperial collection to the twentieth-century connoisseur C. C. Wang.It reached the Metropolitan Museum in 1973 as one of twenty-five paintings given by The Dillon Fund from the Wang family collection, a single gift that helped establish the Museum's Chinese painting department and later funded the galleries built to house it. What is not established, in the sources available for this record, is exactly how the scroll travelled from the Qing court to Wang's hands, or whether any specialist has published an authentication study of this particular object rather than of Zhao Mengfu's archaism in general.The gaps are recorded as gaps. What survives is a painting that argues, on its own surface, for the very principle it embodies: that old models, reread rather than copied, are where the real content of a picture lives. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **ca. 1310** Zhao Mengfu, painted for the official Dong Yeyun `[documented]` (origin) Established by the artist's own two inscriptions on the scroll, naming himself and recording the commission for Dong Yeyun. - **early 14th century** Colophon added by Yang Zai (1271-1323) `[documented]` (inscription) Yang Zai's colophon confirms the commission for Dong Yeyun; Yang died within a year of Zhao Mengfu, placing the colophon close to the painting's creation. - **late 14th century** Mu Ying (1344-1391) `[documented]` (ownership (seal)) A seal identified as Mu Ying's, a Ming general and adopted general of the Hongwu Emperor, is among the collectors' marks catalogued on the scroll. A matched seal is strong evidence of ownership but not an independently corroborated chain-of-custody record. - **mid-to-late 15th century** Yang Zun (jinshi degree 1469) `[documented]` (ownership (seal); colophon added by Tong Xuan (1425-1498)) Yang Zun's seal appears on the scroll, and Tong Xuan's colophon from this period discusses Zhao Mengfu's position as a Song descendant who served the Yuan. - **late 15th century-17th century (before 1691)** unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner is documented in the sources consulted between Yang Zun's ownership and Liang Qingbiao's, a gap of roughly a century and a half. - **17th century-1691** Liang Qingbiao (1620-1691) `[documented]` (ownership (seal)) A seal identified as Liang Qingbiao's is among the collectors' marks on the scroll. Liang was a senior Qing official who at times managed acquisitions for the imperial collection itself. - **late 17th to mid-18th century** An Qi (1683-after 1742) `[documented]` (ownership (seal)) A seal identified as An Qi's is among the collectors' marks. An Qi built his collection partly on material that had passed through Liang Qingbiao and other seventeenth-century collectors before him. - **18th century** Qing imperial collection (Qianlong Emperor, r. 1736-1795) `[documented]` (ownership (seal)) A seal identified as belonging to the Qianlong Emperor places the scroll inside the Qing imperial collection at some point during his reign. - **18th/19th century-20th century** unknown `[unknown]` (gap) The mechanism and date by which the scroll left the Qing imperial collection and re-entered private hands is not established in the sources consulted for this record. - **20th century (by 1973)-1973** C. C. Wang (Wang Jiqian, 1907-2003) and family `[documented]` (ownership) Established by C. C. Wang's own seal on the scroll and by the Metropolitan Museum's credit line, 'Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family.' The date and source of Wang's own acquisition of this particular scroll are not given in the sources consulted. - **1973-present** The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (gift) Gift of The Dillon Fund, 1973, one of twenty-five Song- and Yuan-dynasty paintings acquired from the C. C. Wang family in that transaction. ## Open questions - When, and from whom, did C. C. Wang acquire this scroll? No source consulted for this record gives a date or a prior owner's name for that transaction. - By what route did the scroll leave the Qing imperial collection? A Qianlong-period seal places it inside that collection at some point; how and when it left is not established in the sources consulted. - Who were the owners behind the several unidentified seals among the twenty-three collectors' marks catalogued on the scroll? - Who was Dong Yeyun, the official for whom Zhao Mengfu made the painting? Beyond his title and his appearance in Zhao's inscription and Yang Zai's colophon, no independent biography was found. - Has any named specialist in Yuan painting published an authentication study addressing this specific scroll, rather than Zhao Mengfu's archaism or attribution problems in general? This record did not locate one. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Twin Pines, Level Distance,' accession 1973.120.5, Object ID 40508, including the Museum's public collection API (isPublicDomain, credit line, dimensions, department). - [2] InscrChArt (Inscriptions and Colophons in Chinese Art), Miami University Libraries, catalogue entry for 'Twin Pines, Level Distance,' listing and translating the artist's inscriptions, the Yang Zai and Tong Xuan colophons, and the twenty-three identified collectors' seals. - [3] Richard M. Barnhart, Along the Border of Heaven: Sung and Yuan Paintings from the C. C. Wang Family Collection (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983), foreword by C. C. Wang; source, via InscrChArt, for the translation of Yang Zai's colophon (poem by Barnhart, prose by Maxwell K. Hearn) at p. 120. - [4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release, 'The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces from the C. C. Wang Family Collection' (1999 exhibition), for C. C. Wang's biography and the later, separate Oscar Tang family gift. - [5] Wikipedia, 'C. C. Wang,' for biographical detail on Wang Jiqian, his training under Wu Hufan, his 1949 emigration, and his role authenticating a group of forgeries for the Metropolitan Museum. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a published monograph or the artist's own catalogues raisonnes. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Zhao Mengfu,' for the artist's Song imperial genealogy, his 1286 recruitment by Cheng Jufu, his Yuan court career, his marriage to Guan Daosheng, and his descendants. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography such as Shane McCausland's Zhao Mengfu: Calligraphy and Painting for Khubilai's China. - [7] Apollon Undergraduate Journal, 'Call of the Distant Mountains,' for style analysis specific to this scroll: the calligraphic pine trunks, the flying-white rock texture, and the composition's relationship to Guo Xi's tripartite landscape structure. - [8] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, press materials on 'The Douglas Dillon Legacy: Chinese Painting for the Metropolitan Museum,' for Douglas Dillon's Museum presidency (1970-1977), the Dillon Fund's support, and the 1981 opening of the Douglas Dillon Galleries for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy. - [9] Wikimedia Commons, Category: Paintings by Zhao Mengfu, and the individual Metropolitan Museum photography file pages for 'Twin Pines, Level Distance' (MET DP153682 and MET DP153739), for CC0/public domain licence verification specific to this object. - [10] Biographical detail on the Qing collectors Liang Qingbiao (1620-1691) and An Qi (1683-after 1742), consolidated from museum artist/maker authority pages. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a specialist study of Qing-dynasty painting collecting. - [11] National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian Institution), object page for 'Sheep and Goat,' accession F1931.4, for comparanda. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Autumn Colors on the Que and Hua Mountains,' for comparanda detail on the 1295 handscroll made for Zhou Mi. - [13] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Four Anecdotes from the Life of Wang Xizhi,' Object ID 40509, for comparanda and provenance contrast (Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988). - [14] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Grooms and Horses,' Object ID 40507, for comparanda and provenance contrast (Gift of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988). - [15] China Online Museum, 'Zhao Mengfu: Twin Pines, Level Distance,' for general description. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with the Barnhart 1983 catalogue entry itself. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.