Chiang yee cows in derwent water england
The silent traveller: Chiang Yee in Britain 1933-55 - V&A.
ITEMS 2.1 and 2.2 portray precisely the same landscape, the well-known 'Jaws of Borrowdale' at Derwentwater in the English Lake District.
Chiang yee cows in derwent water england
The brush and ink drawing (ITEM 2.1) was painted by a Chinese writer and artist and published in a volume in which he describes his extensive travels through the English countryside. ITEM 2.2 is a lithograph produced a little over one hundred years earlier by an anonymous Englishman.
The two pictures were first compared by art historian and theorist E.H. Gombrich, in Art and illusion, where he raised a number of interesting issues centering on the question: how much of what we call 'seeing' is conditioned by cultural habits and expectations?
As you compare the two pictures ask yourself which you believe is likely to be the more realistic portrayal of the Jaws of Borrowdale.
Which representation, on the other hand, is more heavily laden with cultural convention?
2.1
Chiang Vee, Cows in Derwentwater, 1936
Brush and ink
From Chiang Vee, Th