The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 24, 2024

Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Lohan [after Guanxiu]

1598–1652

Chen Hongshou

(Chinese, 1598/99–1652)

China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

album leaf, ink and color on silk

Overall: 30.2 x 26.7 cm (11 7/8 x 10 1/2 in.)

John L. Severance Fund 1979.27.2.13

Location: not on view

Did You Know?

Chen Hongshou's gnarled and age lohan, a disciple of Buddha, was inspired by paintings made 700 years earlier by Buddhist monk Guanxiu.

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.

Weng Tonghe 翁同龢 [1830–1904], by descent to Wango H. C. Weng
?–1979
(Wango H. C. Weng 翁萬戈 [1918–2020], Lyme, NH, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
1979–
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1979." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58-99. Reproduced: cat. no. 112, p. 84; Mentioned: p. 62 www.jstor.org
Main Asian Gallery Rotation (Gallery 122); April 7, 2004
Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 120); July1 - Jult 13, 2004.
And to: Tokyo, Japan, Tokyo National Museum, 10/4/82 - 11/17/82 as "Chinese Painting from the Two Distinguished American Museums"
Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 11-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982); The Asia Society Museum, New York, NY (December 3, 1982-February 28, 1983).
CMA, February 11 - March 29, 1981: "Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting," cat. no. 207 pp. 268-272, repr. p. 270, figure 207M
Approved: Trustees' Minutes 12/18/80
Also to: Kansas City, MO, The Nelson-Atkins Museum, 11/5/80 - 1/4/81
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Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1979.27.2.13