Cleveland Museum of Art

Willows

Date: 1100s
Medium: album leaf; ink and light color on silk
Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279)
Department: Chinese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 152549

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

A single scholar in a skiff drifts beneath shade-giving willows and savors his view of mountain peaks just emerging from the pervasive river mist. Round lotus leaves and vertical marsh reeds join with the dotted grasses and curving willow leaves to provide considerable textural variety within the foreground area, which contrasts with the more irregular texturing of the distant mountains. Misty space plays an active part in the composition, and the components of the painting are organized around bisecting diagonals. This river scene features low-lying spits of land surrounded by lotuses and bands of mist floating amid overhanging willows.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith
Provenance: Walter Hochstadter [1914–2007], New York, NY | (N. V. Hammer, New York, NY, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Kelvin Smith) | ?–1985: The Kelvin Smith Collection, Cleveland, OH, given by Mrs. Kelvin [Eleanor Armstrong] Smith [1899–1998] to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1985–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

Chinese landscape paintings
These are predominantly Chinese paintings from the Ming, Qing, Yuan, and Song dynasties that depict natural landscape scenes including mountains, rivers, forests, and human settlements using traditional media such as ink
180 objects from 5 institutions