In the Style of Guo Xi (ca. 1000-1090), Travelers among Mountains and Streams, Hand scroll, 46,5 x 545,5 cm, ink and light colors on silk. Signature at the end of the scroll: "Guo Xi from Heyang". Eight collector's seals, most not legible any more. After the painting ten colophons of connoisseurs of the Yuan and Ming dynasties: Yu Ji (1272-1348), Lu Xingzhi (dat. 1345), Yu He (dat. 1352), Wu Kuan (dat.1470), Chen Jiru (1558-1639) etc. Guo Xi, style name Shunfu, was a native of Wenxian in Henan. He served as 'yixue' in the Painting Academy of the Song dynasty and became the favorite court painter of the Emperor Shenzong (r. 1068-85). He is famous for his monumental landscape painting in an atmospheric, almost baroque style and his treatise on this subject, in which he discussed different kinds of perspective in landscape painting. His most outstanding surviving work is the hanging scroll 'Early Spring' in the National Palace Museum in Taipei - Property from a German private collection, bought 2006 by the present owner from an old German private collection - This handscroll is extremely interesting, because it shows a long, complete composition fully executed in his characteristic style although of course in the different mood of a later time. Thus it may have been copied after an original work by him as model. It depicts travelers and traders on an arduous road through steep mountains in a quite realistic way. Some writers of the colophons identify it with the legendary dangerous road to Shu (Sichuan). It starts among fishermen on a wide stream before it enters the ragged and twisted mountains filled with fantastic pines, firs and mist. The traders push wheelbarrows or use two wheeled carriages driven by mules or oxen. Some are going by foot, a group of scholars with large hats is riding on mules. Most interesting is the rest-house near a steep bridge in the midst of the mountains. The mules are fed and the travelers sit at long tables eating and resting. After crossing steep ravines and streams the road, build with wooden beams against the steep cliffs, winds itself up to the gate of a mountain pass and then enters a vast plain with rivers - Very minor damages due to age, wear