Chinese landscape painting, shan shui (山水, literally "mountains and water"), is one of the calmest things you can show on a Samsung Frame TV. Mist, empty space and soft ink on aged silk or paper suit a matte screen, and some of the greatest paintings ever made are free to download from museum open-access collections. The problem is shape. Chinese paintings were made as tall hanging scrolls, very long handscrolls, small album leaves or round fans, and almost none of them are 16:9. This guide covers which formats and painters to start with, where to find good free scans, how to cut a 16:9 view out of a long scroll, what to do about seals and inscriptions, and six text-free prompts for generating new ink-wash landscapes at 4K.

Why shan shui works so well in Art Mode

• Empty space is part of the picture. Large areas of untouched silk or mist give the eye somewhere to rest. On a TV that lives in your living room all day, that is exactly what you want. Our negative space guide explains why quiet images read as intentional from across the room.
• Low contrast suits a matte screen. Ink washes rarely include bright whites or deep glowing colours, so there is nothing to make the screen look like a screen.
• Texture rewards a close look. Good museum scans show silk weave, brush texture and centuries of toning. At 4K, guests tend to walk up to the TV to inspect it.
• It fits many interiors. Ink landscapes work in Japandi, Scandinavian, minimalist and traditional rooms alike, and the palette (warm brown, grey-black, a little blue-green) sits comfortably with wood and stone.

Formats: which ones fit a 16:9 screen

If you already rotate your TV for tall art, hanging scrolls are where that pays off. Our vertical Frame TV guide lists which sizes support portrait mounting.

Painters and works to know

You do not need to be an expert to choose well, but knowing a few names makes museum searches far more productive:

• Fan Kuan, Travelers Among Mountains and Streams (Northern Song, c. 1000). A towering cliff over a tiny mule train. It is a hanging scroll, so it needs a mat or a portrait-mounted TV, but it is the definitive "monumental" landscape.
• Guo Xi (11th century). His Early Spring (1072) is another tall masterpiece. He also wrote about the "three distances": high, deep and level. "Level distance", a wide view across water to far hills, is the one that suits a 16:9 screen. The Met's handscroll Old Trees, Level Distance is a good example.
• Ma Yuan and Xia Gui (Southern Song, c. 1200). Known for pushing the subject into one corner and leaving the rest as mist. These asymmetrical compositions crop beautifully and look modern on a wall.
• Huang Gongwang, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1350). A famous long handscroll of rolling hills along a river, in soft dry brushwork. Ideal material for panning crops.
• Ming-dynasty literati painters such as Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming. Gentler, more intimate garden and river scenes, often with light colour. Good for bedrooms and studies.
• "Blue-green" landscapes. A style using mineral blue and green pigments, as in Wang Ximeng's A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains. Brighter and more decorative, and a nice change from ink-only work in spring and summer.

Not every famous painting has a free, high-resolution scan. Several of the most celebrated works are held by museums that do not publish open-access images, so treat this list as a guide to what to search for, then use whatever the open collections actually offer.

Where to download free, high-resolution scans

Rights are set object by object, so always check the label on the page you download from:

• National Palace Museum, Taipei. Holds many of the best Song and Yuan landscapes. Its Open Data programme lets you download images without an application, with attribution to the museum. Many files are medium resolution, so check pixel size before you commit to a crop.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Filter the collection search to Open Access and Asian Art. Public-domain images are free for any use.
• Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art (Freer Gallery). Many Chinese landscapes are marked CC0 with an image download, but some carry "usage conditions apply", so read the rights line on each object.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Its Open Access collection publishes public-domain works under CC0, including a strong group of Chinese paintings.
• Wikimedia Commons. Handy for finding a well-known painting fast, but follow the link back to the source museum and check the file size and colour.

Prefer the largest file or TIFF on offer. Long handscrolls are often published as one enormous image, which is exactly what you want for cropping. For more free collections, see where to find free art for your Frame TV.

Cutting a 16:9 view from a handscroll

Handscrolls were never meant to be seen all at once. Viewers unrolled them an arm's length at a time, so taking one section is close to how they were originally enjoyed. A simple method:

1. Keep the full height. Do not crop top or bottom; the sky and water margins are part of the composition.
2. Work out your window width. Multiply the image height by 16/9. For example, the painted area of Old Trees, Level Distance is listed by the Met at about 35.6 x 104.4 cm, so a full-height 16:9 window is about 63 cm wide, a little over half the painting.
3. Slide the window along the scroll. Look for a section with a clear focal point (a cluster of trees, a pavilion, a boat) and a quieter area on one side. Off-centre usually looks better than centred.
4. Check the pixel count. Your window should be at least 2160 pixels tall for a sharp 3840 x 2160 export. If it is smaller, upscale carefully rather than relying on the TV to stretch it.
5. Make a series. Three or four crops from the same scroll, shown in order as a slideshow, recreate the feeling of unrolling it over a day or a week.

For hanging scrolls you want to show in landscape, you can upload the whole image and choose a mat in Art Mode, or use an AI edge-extension tool to add more mist and silk at the sides. Extended areas are not the original, so keep them plain and check carefully for seams. File preparation is covered in our artwork sizes guide and upload guide.

Seals, inscriptions and colophons

Chinese paintings carry more writing than almost any other art tradition. You will see the artist's inscription, red seals from the artist and from later owners, and often long colophons (comments by later viewers) mounted after the painting on a handscroll. Some famous works have dozens of collectors' seals stamped across the image itself.

• Keep seals that sit inside the composition. A small red seal is often the only warm accent in an ink painting and helps it read as authentic.
• Crop out colophon sections. Long blocks of calligraphy at the start or end of a scroll are fascinating in a museum but look like text on a TV. Choosing a crop window away from them is the easy fix.
• Avoid painting over seals. If you want a cleaner image, choose a different crop. If you do retouch, keep it for personal display and do not present the result as the original.

Art Mode settings for ink on silk and paper

• Color Tone. Use a warm setting. Old silk is a deep tan or brown, and a cool tone turns it a muddy grey.
• Brightness. Keep the light sensor on and go a step or two dimmer than you would for a photo. Ink paintings never glow; the dimmest level that still shows detail in the darkest ink looks most real.
• Mat. For album leaves, fans and uncropped hanging scrolls, a warm cream or soft grey mat works best. A pure white mat makes aged silk look dirty by comparison.
• Bezel. Walnut or teak echoes traditional scroll rollers and wooden display stands; a black bezel suits stark monochrome ink. See the bezel-by-art-style guide.

Menu paths vary by model year; our Art Mode settings guide shows where each option lives. The same advice applies to other matte art TVs such as the Hisense CanvasTV.

A seasonal ink-wash rotation

Lunar New Year falls on February 6, 2027. Plum blossom in snow makes an elegant bridge from winter landscapes into the festival; our Lunar New Year 2027 guide has red-and-gold ideas for the holiday itself. If you also enjoy Japanese prints, the woodblock print guide pairs well, and Japandi interiors are a natural home for both.

Six text-free ink-wash prompts

Generating your own lets you compose for 16:9 from the start. Ask for the style, not a specific painting, and always tell the model to leave out calligraphy and seals: image models love to add fake characters, which look wrong to anyone who reads Chinese.

• Traditional Chinese ink-wash landscape, wide level-distance view across a calm river to far misty hills, two old pine trees on a rocky bank at the left, aged tan silk texture, generous empty space, flat edge-to-edge 16:9 artwork, no calligraphy, no seals, no TV frame
• Southern Song style one-corner composition, a scholar under a leaning pine at the lower right gazing into vast mist, soft grey ink gradations, warm paper texture, flat edge-to-edge 16:9 artwork, no calligraphy, no seals, no TV frame
• Chinese blue-green landscape painting style, layered mountain ridges in mineral blue and malachite green, small pavilions and a winding path, aged silk tone, flat edge-to-edge 16:9 artwork, no calligraphy, no seals, no TV frame
• Chinese ink painting of snowy mountains at dusk, a lone fisherman in a small boat on a dark cold river, sparse brushwork, mostly blank silk, flat edge-to-edge 16:9 artwork, no calligraphy, no seals, no TV frame
• Ming literati landscape style, a thatched study among willows beside a stream, light washes of pale green and ochre, delicate brush lines, calm and intimate, flat edge-to-edge 16:9 artwork, no calligraphy, no seals, no TV frame
• Expressive splashed-ink landscape, bold black ink pooling into soft grey mist, hints of mountain peaks and a waterfall, rice-paper texture, abstract but recognisable, flat edge-to-edge 16:9 artwork, no calligraphy, no seals, no TV frame

For more ways to use historic styles as prompt references, see our famous painting styles guide and the black-and-white art guide, which covers monochrome on a matte screen in more depth.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Chinese ink-wash and Japanese sumi-e?

Sumi-e grew out of Chinese ink painting, which reached Japan through Zen monasteries. Chinese shan shui tends to build large, layered landscapes, often on silk and sometimes with colour, while sumi-e is usually sparer and more focused on a single subject. Both look excellent in Art Mode; our Japandi guide covers the sumi-e side.

Will an old painting look too dark or brown on the TV?

Silk darkens with age, and some scans show it as quite brown. A warm Color Tone with low brightness usually looks right. If a scan still feels muddy, lift the midtones slightly in an editor, but avoid bleaching the silk white; that is what makes it look fake.

What screen size suits ink landscapes?

Minimal one-corner compositions work at any size. Detailed handscroll sections, with tiny travellers and boats, reward 55 inches and up. Our sizes guide has viewing-distance charts.