Artwork Page for Water Village

Details / Information for Water Village

Water Village

平橋遠水

1570

Wen Boren 文伯仁

(Chinese, 1502–1575)
Culture
China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Medium
handscroll; ink and light color on paper
Measurements
Overall: 26.7 x 183 cm (10 1/2 x 72 1/16 in.)
Credit Line
The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith 1985.370
Public Domain
You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.
Location
Not on view
Print
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Did You Know?

A foreground tree has an eccentric twisting silhouette and pepper-dot "halo" of leaves.

Description

In the autumn of 1570, Wen Boren painted this seemingly unemotional scene of low-lying marshlands with a chain of rounded mountains in the background. A fishing boat is nestled on the shore near the village. Although paths and bridges traverse the landscape, only two people are visible in the stillness.

From the restrained atmosphere of this landscape, one would never guess that Wen Boren was known as the “bad boy” of the Wu School for his explosive temper. As a younger man, he was even embroiled in a contentious lawsuit with his own uncle, Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), a master of Ming dynasty painting with whom he had trained. The ideal of the scholar-painter, or literati, was that an artist’s moral character is reflected in his paintings, so there was great incongruity between Wen Boren’s difficult personality and his restrained landscapes. A contemporary, Wang Shizhen, wrote this about him:

"This gentleman is prone to behave odiously and screamed accusations at people. How is it possible for him to carry in his bosom such a wealth of scenic wonders?"

Who knows what effort it took to subdue his fractious spirit to project an image of coolness and refined taste in his paintings?
A horizontal handscroll in ink and light color on paper features a landscape flanked by columns of calligraphy and red stamps. On our far left, text precedes a panorama of low hills and thin, leafless trees. Dwellings sit along a shoreline near open water, while rounded mountains appear in faint gray washes. Red seals mark the surface throughout the composition, which ends with decorative borders and additional characters on the far right.

Water Village

1570

Wen Boren

(Chinese, 1502–1575)
China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

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