Chinese Picture Stone, Framed

The hills roll, the sky scuffs, and nobody painted either of them.

This framed picture stone comes from China, of indeterminate age. It sits in a long Chinese tradition of admiring stone for what it suggests, the same habit of mind behind scholar's rocks, and collectors framed such slabs much as they would a landscape painting. According to the record, nothing was pieced in or colored. Tan and rust strata fold across the lower half, darkening to violet at left, under a wide, pale sky with a faint glow of orange. The frame is huali wood, dark and rounded. Just under twenty-eight inches wide.

Weather, apparently, is an underrated draftsman.