Part of the 16-m-long scroll Ten Thousand Li Downstream the Yangtze River by Wang Hui.

One of the "Weng Collection's" most famous works is Frontispiece to a Taoist Sutra, created by 13th-century court painter Liang Kai.

The exquisite gongbi (fine-brush) hand scroll depicts a spectacular deity seated with his entourage. They are surrounded by clouds and flanked by bustling scenes of earthly happenings.

Believed to be the only known specimen of Liang's courtly style, the work is lauded for its draftsmanship and its eye-straining detail.

Another of the show's top attractions is Ten Thousand Li Downstream the Yangtze River, a monumental hand scroll (16 m long by about 40 cm high), tracing the Yangtze River from its source in misty mountains to the ocean.

It took Wang Hui (1632-1717) seven years to complete the ambitious masterpiece.

The Wenrenhua (literati or scholar-official) school painting's green, gray and brown hues, and its fine brushstrokes, distinguish it from the showier professional school of the time.

Also know as the Orthodox school in its heyday, the Wenrenhua school was associated with cultivated literati, such as official-cum-scholar Weng Tonghe.

In his beautifully rendered Three Hermits: Plum, Chrysanthemum and Narcissus, renowned Ming Dynasty calligrapher and painter Chen Hongshou depicts with razor-fine lines and gossamer shading the upper parts of three flowering plants, horizontally arranged across the otherwise blank silk surface.

In addition to demonstrating keen botanical observation, it is widely hailed as a tribute to three hermetic spiritual masters celebrated in a poem by Chen, inscribed to the left of the image.

Another work by Chen is a large painting of a monk and a poet, sitting and chatting at a rugged stone table under an extraordinarily gnarly flowering tree.

Although it features a comical - even cartoon-like - appearance, the image also suavely exemplifies the literati's concept of an idealized marriage of nature and philosophy.

(China Daily January 9, 2009)