China and Taiwan May Ally to Unite a Lost Masterpiece

The first section of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains," currently kept in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou

A detail of the second half of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains," currently on display at the National Palace Museum in Taipei

HANGZHOU, China—Yang Jianxin, head of the Zhenjiang Provincial Department of Culture, recently revealed that the Zhenjiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, China, is in discussions with Taiwan's National Palace Museum to organize a joint exhibition of the two remaining pieces of Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, one of the great masterpieces of Chinese landscape painting.

One of the few surviving works made by Huang, a Yuan Dynasty painter who lived from 1269 to 1354, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is an enormous hand scroll painting that depicts a sweeping view of mountains along the banks of the Fuchun River in Southern China. Although long esteemed as a work of extraordinary quality, that it has managed to survive until today is something of a miracle given the harrowing dangers presented by centuries of tumultuous Chinese history — and one owner’s overzealous obsession.

In the late Ming Dynasty, collector Wu Hongyu was so enamored of the painting, which he had inherited, that he ordered it burned shortly before his death so that he could continue to enjoy it in the afterlife. Wu’s nephew, however, managed to rescue two charred pieces of the painting painting during its ritual destruction. One section, approximately half a meter long, renamed Broken Mountain, is currently in the collection of the Zhenjiang Provincial Museum, while the other nearly six-meter-long section is kept in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

According to National Palace Museum director Chou Kung-shin, the historic reunion of the painting's sections could occur as soon as 2012, timed to coincide with a survey of Huang’s works in Taipei. Though plans are not yet definitive, the hint of such a collaboration could suggest an improvement in relations between the two countries, which have disputed over the ownership of a wealth of Chinese artifacts in the Taiwan museum that were brought to the island in 1949 by the army of Chinese Nationalist general Chiang Kai-shek.