The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, Volume 3

Master Studies in the Circular Format

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, Volume 5

A painting by Fan Zongcheng original: 范宗丞 (Fan Zongcheng). This refers to an official and painter of the Song dynasty. His title, Zongcheng, denotes his rank in the Imperial Court, a common way to refer to scholar-painters.

Xiao Lingcong imitated this at the Plum Stone Mountain Studio original: 蕭靈從 (Xiao Lingcong), an alias for Xiao Yuncong (1596–1673), a famous painter known for his distinctive, "dry" brushwork and his contributions to woodblock-printed art manuals. The Plum Stone Mountain Studio (Meishi Shanfang) was his personal retreat and workshop.

Artistic Commentary

The illustration on this page is presented in a circular format, mimicking the shape of a traditional silk fan—a favorite medium for intimate landscape scenes. This particular lesson demonstrates the concept of Fang (creative imitation), which is the cornerstone of Chinese art education. Rather than purely copying, the artist Xiao Lingcong "channels" the spirit of the Song dynasty master Fan Zongcheng.

In this composition, we see the classic elements of a "literati" landscape:

The Foreground: Robust, weathered trees with intricate branch work growing from jagged rocks.
The Middle Ground: A small, humble pavilion original: 亭 (ting) perched on a cliffside, representing the scholar's desire to withdraw from the world and contemplate nature.
The Background: Distant, mist-shrouded peaks that suggest a vast, infinite space beyond the physical world.

The brushwork here is characterized by "hemp-fiber" texture strokes and "pepper" dots, techniques used to give the mountains a sense of tactile reality and ancient geological weight.