Cleveland Museum of Art

River Village in a Rainstorm

Lu Wenying

Date

c. 1480–1507

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink and slight color on silk

Culture

China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

In this scene, windswept rain pelting a village captures the power of nature in a masterful composition. Lü Wenying from Zhejiang served as a court painter during the Hongzhi era (1488–1505). Hardly known, with few remaining works, he is considered a Zhe school painter who followed the style of the Southern Song academy. Zhe school painters, named after the province of Zhejiang, transformed the poetic scenery of the Southern Song artists into dramatic, large-scale views. Active in the same region with frequent monsoon rains in the summer season, artists were familiar with outbreaks of rain and storms. A young boy peeks out a window perhaps viewing the two people struggling through the rain.

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