Artwork Page for Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholar Reading in a Thatched Hut by a Waterfall

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Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholar Reading in a Thatched Hut by a Waterfall

1598–1652

Chen Hongshou 陳洪綬

(Chinese, 1598/99–1652)
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Culture
China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Medium
album leaf; ink and color on silk
Measurements
Overall: 30.2 x 26.7 cm (11 7/8 x 10 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund 1979.27.2.18
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Chen Hongshou dedicated this album of 20 paintings to his friend Lin Zhongqing.

Description

The twenty paintings in this double-album by Chen Hongshou include landscapes, figures, and flowers. It also has one leaf featuring a woman, an often-used subject not found in the other albums from the latter part of his career. His late works are wonderful summations of Chen's peculiar and quirky art--archaistic, hyper-refined--but without accompanying shallowness or sentimentality.

His figures and landscapes in the late albums are miniaturized, not unlike the small Chinese gardens, or the carefully selected small table rocks or old roots used for contemplation to see the world in miniature. This loss of scale is quite deliberate and reflects the psychological situation of a depressed class like the Ming loyalist officials and scholars, deprived of their integrity and honor, and forced to lead a diminished and restricted existence.
An album leaf with ink and color on silk depicts a scholar reading inside a thatched pavilion among dark, craggy rocks. Large pines with needle-like strokes and trees with reddish leaves lean over the structure. A waterfall flows into a river below, while distant blue mountains zigzag across the background. Red square seals feature in the lower right, and black calligraphy appears at the lower left.

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholar Reading in a Thatched Hut by a Waterfall

1598–1652

Chen Hongshou

(Chinese, 1598/99–1652)
China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

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