| Pan Tianshou excelled in painting flowers and animals in horizontal compositions. His style, "two mountains divided by water", uniquely combines the genres of landscape and flower-and-bird painting. "Buffalo in a Summer Pond" is a classic example. He chose the unusual subject of an old buffalo and painted its half-submerged form with splashed ink. The buffalo's immense body echoes the angular boulder on the far shore, as if they were an island and a cliff facing each other in a valley. The quiet image of the old buffalo in still water is translated into an energetic depiction of the landscape of the Three Gorges. |
