Cleveland Museum of Art

Man, Buffalo, and Calf

Li You

Date: 1145
Medium: album leaf; ink and color on silk
Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
Department: Chinese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

Here, a herdboy tending a cow with a calf is sitting beneath a tree with his pet myna bird. The painting can be read as a pastoral scene. As the water buffalo helped plow the fields, it was perceived as an animal that endures hard work without gain for itself, often interpreted as a metaphor for the official. Ox-herding pictures, presented as gifts in court circles, were used for their moral and political rhetoric. The Yijing (Book of Changes) states, The Receptive is the earth, the mother . . . it is a cow with a calf . . . the multitude [in relation to the ruler] . Li You included such tiny details as circular patterns of hair on the buffalo’s hindquarters.

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