The way artists represented nature in China and Japan contrasts strikingly with their counterparts in Europe. Diminution of scale was used in both traditions to suggest recession, but whereas in China and Japan, mist was used to create an "atmospheric perspective," in Europe a more scientific perspective emphasized diagonals and receding lines. European interest in depicting light and shadow—a tradition that stretches back to Roman times—was not shared by Chinese painters, who perhaps felt that such effects were too transient and distracted from a deeper reality.


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Chen Chun, Chinese | Hills and Streams after Rain, first half of the 16th Century

The horizontal format of this painting allows the viewer to journey slowly along the landscape as the handscroll is unrolled from right to left. The perspective is thus dynamic, even cinematic, with each passage depicted from its own frontal viewpoint. Just as Claude Lorrain (see below) captures a specific moment in time—the deepening shadows of late afternoon—so likewise Chen Chun portrays the almost palpably moist atmosphere and lush foliage of landscape soon after rainfall. The figure walking with a cane in the foreground helps draw the viewer into the painting—a contemporary Chinese viewer would have identified with the notion of a traveler communing with nature.

Claude Gellée, called Le Lorrain, French | View of the Tiber at Rome, ca. 1635–1640

This drawing is accurate topographically and was probably done out of doors on the site. The artist has used deep washes to convey the effect of strong shadow, contrasted with the bright Italian sunlight. Tiny figures on the rock upper left give scale to the scene. On the far bank of the river can be seen a country villa, with the dome of St Peter’s to the far right. Reflections in the water become standard in European landscape, but are rarely found in Chinese painting until the 20th century.