Wang Wei was a Chinese musician, painter, poet, and politician of the middle Tang dynasty. He is regarded as one of the most distinguished men of arts and letters of his era. About 400 of his poems survived and 29 of them are included in the 18th-century anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems. A large portion of his finest poems drew inspirations from the local landscape.
Wang Wei (Tang dynasty)
Riders on Horseback, Northern Qi dynasty, the general area of the rebel heartland, although of an earlier date
A modern picture from Mount Hua, in the Qinling Mountain Range, perhaps suggesting some of the area's wild and rugged features which still exist today, and that would have also been enjoyed by Wang Wei and his friends.
Photograph of Wang Wei's Snowy River. Formerly part of the Manchu Family Collection, Beijing, now lost.
The Tang dynasty, or the Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilization, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivaled that of the Han dynasty.
Portrait painting, dating to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), depicting the first Tang emperor Gaozu (born Li Yuan, 566–635)
"Great Tang" (大唐; Dà Táng) in seal characters
Tang emissaries to Sogdian King Varkhuman in Samarkand, 648–651 CE, Afrasiab murals
Sogdian Huteng dancer, Xiuding temple pagoda, Anyang, Henan. Tang dynasty, 7th century