Cleveland Museum of Art
Fisherman's Joy
Qian GuLinkedCulture matchlcp-fd1a6a3cb33d
- Date
- 1572
- Medium
- Handscroll; ink and light color on paper
- Culture
- China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 149126
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
This painting has a scene showing two small crafts, each manned by two fishermen, practicing a traditional fishing method. In one of them, a man uses a bamboo pole to direct the movements of a cormorant bird sent into the water. Cormorant fishing, witnessed in some areas of the lower Yangzi River, appears in Zhe school paintings. Qian Gu may have borrowed these narrative figure scenes from Zhe school paintings, while his vantage point, brushwork, and soft tones align with the Wu school style. Scenes of fishermen appealed to urban and educated audiences who idealized the self-sufficient independence of fisherfolk.
The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Provenance
- ?–1977: (Dr. Gimpoh Y. King [1911–1998], Cleveland, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1977–: 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
180 objects from 5 institutions
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.