Brush Holder with Figures in Landscape and Poetic Inscription by Wang Meilin from Jiading

筆筒

1800s

Wang Meilin 王梅邻

(Chinese, active c. 1825)

Culture

China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Daoguang reign (1821-50)

Medium

carved bamboo

Measurements

Overall: 16 x 12.4 cm (6 5/16 x 4 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

John L. Severance Fund 1988.75

You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.

Location

240B Chinese Decorative Arts

Did You Know?

Bamboo was considered a humble material that suited the Confucian ideals of frugality and modesty.

Description

This bamboo brush holder shows a scholar inside a mountain retreat under trees. On its back side, a cliff inscribed with a text by the Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) describes the carefree life of a scholar among family and servants in the countryside.

The text in cursive script style calligraphy (xingshu) says:

A ten-acre [home], a five-acre yard with a water pool, and a thousand bamboos. Don’t say the field is narrow, or the location remote. It is enough to accommodate the knee and rest the shoulder. It has a hall and a yard, a bridge and a boat. It has books and wine, songs and string [instruments]. An old man in the midst of it, his white beard flowing. [He] is moderate and satisfied, has no demands and needs. Like a bird he chooses a branch, builds a nest, and rests at ease. Like a fish in a swamp, that does not know how wide the ocean is. . . . All I like, lies before me. I drink a cup of wine from time to time, recite a [poem], wife and children play, chicken and dogs are at leisure, and I will grow old here.