Introduction
This work was completed when Zhao Erdai was fifty-three years old, marking an early transitional stage in his ink wash creations from traditional heart-image landscapes to a personal language. The composition still primarily consists of heart-image elements, maintaining an ideal structure with readable mountains and space. However, the brushwork has started to exhibit tendencies of looseness, simplification, and fragmentation, indicating that the artist is gradually loosening the constraints of traditional landscape rules in preparation for future field observation and physical experience-centered ink wash studies.