Signed

Shiming, my fellow artist, is an expert in the principles of painting. He collects widely and studies broadly the famous works of the Song and Yuan dynasties, understanding their profundities and searching out their subtleties. Moreover he has traveled to almost all of the tall mountains and great rivers to the north and south of the Yangzi River. With true landscapes in his mind each [of his paintings] is planned and expansive with free transformations that cannot be thoroughly fathomed. When faced with such paintings, I want to withdraw. Now that I have returned to Yushan he often visited, stimulating me with the teachings of the ancients. He does not consider my awkward brushwork as ugly and repeatedly asks for it. I have exerted myself to paint this scroll in response to his request. Ashamed at the shallowness of my own learning, even in my dreams I cannot see the least resemblance to Huayuan [Fan Kuan]. As a great connoisseur, you certainly have something to teach me. On the ninth day of the third month of the jiyou year [1669], the man of Wumu Mountain, Wang Hui, [painted] and inscribed.