Cleveland Museum of Art

Conversation in a Thatched Hut

Date

late 1200s

Medium

album leaf; ink and color on silk

Culture

China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Two scholars in white robes sit conversing in a simple hut before a bamboo grove. The foreground and right side are filled with two spindly trees and a grove of banana trees among rugged rocks and precipices, all drawn in ink outline and filled in with opaque blue and green pigment. Landscapes painted in blue and green mineral pigments often allude to the past or to paradise. Here the color may suggest that surrounded by nature, the scholars could escape the hassles of the chaotic world.

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