Juran

Who is Juran?

Juran was a Chinese landscape painter of the late Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and early Northern Song periods.

Very little is known about Juran's life, and not even his family name is known. He was a native of Chiang-Ning and worked at the Southern Tang court in Jinling. Around 975 Li Houzhu, the ruler of Southern Tang, surrendered to the Northern Song dynasty. Like many, he and his court were to move to the new capital, Bianjing; Juran went with them. He lived and worked at the K'ai-pao Buddhist temple in Bianjing, but quickly rose to prominence as landscape painter.

There are a few works that have been attributed to him on various grounds: two hanging scrolls in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, and one hanging scroll in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. All these works show influence of Dong Yuan's style of rounded contours and soft brushstrokes, but no sign of the older painter's horizontal, level-distance landscape format. According to contemporary sources, Juran also painted a wall painting, Morning Scenery of Haze and Mist, very highly regarded by the artists of the time, but this work is lost.