Camel in the Melting Snow, Hanging Scroll

At the age of sixty-nine, during the height of his artistic maturity, Hua Yan painted this scene—a favorite theme in his oeuvre depicting journeys along the remote frontiers. At the foot of snow-covered mountains, a traveler from the Western Regions peers from his yurt at a camel grazing on sparse winter grass. Hua outlines the round tent and the figure’s face with a few spare lines, contrasting the tent’s blank white with the vivid red of the man’s robe. The tall, narrow composition, with a solitary wild goose flying overhead, evokes the boundless sky and the traveler’s quiet loneliness. An inscription in the upper left reads:

“Yellow plains bare, the barren desert curves;
Black mountains, winds sharp, clouds frozen firm.
The old camel gnaws in the moonlit cold;
Fresh sky opens as one wild goose flies.”

Similar works by the artist, Camel in the Winter Cold and Snow on the Tianshan Mountains, are in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing.