The Two Versions of Dong Qichang's "River in Mist and Piled Peaks" and the Impact of High-Resolution Photography on the Question of Authenticity

In or about 1605, the painter and calligrapher Dong Qichang (1555–1636) painted a handscroll inspired by a painting and a poem that were centuries old: Wang Shen's 王詵 (ca. 1048–ca. 1103) Yanjiang diezhang tu 煙江疊嶂圖, or River in Mist and Piled Peaks, and the poem that Wang's friend, the famous litterateur Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101), composed in his enthusiasm after seeing Wang's work.  Dong's handscroll, which is known by the same title as Wang Shen's painting, exists in two versions: one in the Palace Museum, Taipei, and the other in the Shanghai Museum.  This paper begins by tracing their prov- enance, and then, with the aid of high resolution photographs that have become available only in recent years, examines their differences—in the placement of the colophon, in the artist's seal, in the paintings' design and brushwork, and in the calligraphy—with the aim of determining which of the two paintings is genuine, or whether neither is from Dong Qichang's own hand.
 

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