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Additional Views

May 13, 2008

May 7, 2010

Listening to the Bamboo

聽竹圖

late 1400s-1500s

imitator of Wen Zhengming 文徵明

(Chinese, 1470–1559)

China, Ming dynasty

(1368–1644)

Hanging scroll, ink on sutra paper

Painting: 94.5 x 30.5 cm (37 3/16 x 12 in.); Overall with knobs: 202 x 55 cm (79 1/2 x 21 5/8 in.)

Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1977.172

Location

not on view

Inscriptions

Inscription

Artist's inscription, signature, and 2 seals on the separate sheet of paper above the painting: In the empty studio sitting in deep loneliness;/ Like cool sound sending pure beauty,/ Or pendants swinging in the wind,/ Or a solitary qin suggesting running water./ Where is that sound from?/ The green poles in the courtyard,/ Clear and light like an echo,/ The sound and ears are in tune./ The sound of bamboo now very beautiful;/ My ears are also clear./ Who says the sound is in the bamboo?/ To know it depends on oneself./ A noble person is like a tall bamboo;/ A thin bamboo is like the noble man./ When the sound enters, the mind responds,/ Only one thing but artificially separated./ A bystander searching for the sound,/ But the sound can only be found in silence./ Otherwise I am still I,/ Bamboo is still bamboo./ Even if I live with bamboo every day,/ Still the music will be a thousand miles away./ Look at sound's most primeval source:/ Did it enter a zither or a lute? Composing a poem on Listening to the Bamboo. Written by Zhengming at the Ting yun guan. Wen Zhengming [2 seals] Wen Zhengming yin 文徵明印; Wei geng yin wu yi jiang 惟庚寅吾以降.

Inscription

[印] 文徵明印; 惟庚寅吾以降.

Inscription Translation

2 artist's seals on middle right edge of the painting: Wen Zhengming yin; Wei geng yin wu yi jiang [It was in the gengyin year when I was born.]

Inscription Remark

In his 2015 Silent Poetry catalogue, Ju-hsi Chou wrote that if one believes the seal, it can give a rough indication of the date for this painting. "Wen Zhengming's birth year was 1470, which fell in the gengyin year. Yet he did not carve this seal to celebrate his first genyin year, but his second one, i.e. 1530, after he had lived a full cycle of sixty years and was looking toward a long life beyond. In those days of pre-modern China, to live beyond sixty years as as rare as it was enviable."

Inscription

5 seals of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-95)

Inscription

[印] 金粟山藏經紙

Inscription Translation

Seal (once on the calligraphy section and once on the painting): Jin su shan cang jing zhi

Inscription Remark

These seals indicate that the painting and calligraphy are on the famous sutra paper from Mt. Jinsu.

Provenance

Qing imperial collection [seals of Emperor Qianlong, r. 1736–1795]

Zhang Yanmou 張燕謀 [1846–1913]

Wen Qi 文祁 [1900s]

?-1977

(Jean-Pierre Dubosc [1904–1988], Paris, France, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)

1977-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Edwards, Richard. The Art of Wen Cheng-Ming (1470-1559). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1976. Reproduced: cat. no. 33

Hironobu Kohara 古原宏伸. Shin Shū, Bun Chōmei [ 沈周文徴明 = Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming]. Tōkyō: Chūō Kōronsha, 1978. Reproduced: p. 168, pl. 62

Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980. Reproduced: cat. no. 173, pp. 218-220

Laozi 老子 and Stephen Mitchell, translator. Tao te ching 道德经. London: Frances Lincoln, 1999. Reproduced: cover, p. 64, p. 116

Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 270-278

Exhibition history

The Art of Wen Cheng-ming. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI (January 25-February 29, 1976); Asia House Gallery, New York, NY (April 7-June 7, 1976)

Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 10-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982).

Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 119). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 16-October 28, 2003).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=Listening to the Bamboo|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1977.172|author=Wen Zhengming|year=late 1400s-1500s|access-date=26 September 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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Listening to the Bamboo

Listening to the Bamboo

聽竹圖

imitator of Wen Zhengming 文徵明

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