Localized Meteorologies and the Aesthetics of Clouds: Visualizing Weather in Ming Dynasty Zhe School Landscape Painting

This paper explores how Ming dynasty Zhe School (浙派) painters visualized clouds and weather by integrating localized meteorological knowledge, ecological perception, and painterly strategies. Moving beyond stylistic genealogy and workshop traditions, it argues that Zhe School artists developed a distinctive “localized meteorology”—a visual language shaped by Jiangnan’s humid subtropical climate, where mist, moisture, and cloud dynamics profoundly influenced aesthetic conventions and artistic expression.

Through close analyses of Dai Jin’s Spring Revelry (春酣图), Wu Wei’s Snow on Ba Bridge (灞桥风雪图), and Lan Ying’s Clearing After Autumn Rain in the Chu Mountains (楚山秋霁图), the study examines three dimensions: (1) pictorial strategies of atmosphere, where Dai Jin uses layered washes and suspended clouds to create dynamic spatial continuity; (2) weather as sensory and ecological knowledge, as Wu Wei translates Jiangnan’s unstable winter climate into textured strokes and tonal modulation; and (3) cosmology and transience, as Lan Ying’s dispersing clouds evoke shifting air currents and cycles of renewal central to Ming thought.

By situating Zhe School landscapes within broader Ming epistemologies of nature, this study demonstrates that clouds functioned as mediators between painterly formulas, embodied perception, and local ecological sensibilities. It reveals how Zhe School artists engaged weather as a form of knowledge, intertwining environmental experience, artistic tradition, and cultural meaning. Ultimately, the paper reconsiders Zhe School painting as deeply responsive to atmospheric and ecological conditions, highlighting how Ming painters visualized climate as integral to constructing aesthetic, cultural, and cosmological imaginaries.