Cleveland Museum of Art
Palace Ladies
Qiu YingLinkedCulture matchlcp-2944f4c6ae0c
- Date
- 1644–1911
- Medium
- handscroll, ink and color on silk
- Culture
- China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 131793
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
This handscroll illustrates the pursuits of court ladies in a palace precinct on a spring day. Women, young girls, and their maids amuse themselves by sitting on a swing, playing games, watering and admiring peonies, performing music together, playing the qin (zither), feeding a parrot on the balustrade and fish in the water, or catching butterflies. The life of elite women was mostly restricted to the so-called inner quarters, meaning the garden and inner courts of the house. This painting idealizes the world of young palace girls that in fact was often filled with boredom and waiting for a lover.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Gift of I. Theodore Kahn
- Provenance
- ?–1954: I. Theodore Kahn, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1954–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Part of a LinkedCulture topic
Chinese landscape paintingsThese 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
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