Cleveland Museum of Art

Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Two Women with Needlework in a Garden

Hua Yan

Date: 1745
Medium: Album leaf; ink and light color on paper
Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
Department: Chinese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

Two women doing needlework are confined in an interior space. The other 11 paintings in this Hua Yan album show men in nature. The women may experience the natural world only through the large moon-shaped window open to a garden. Prominently displayed in the garden is a Taihu stone, like CMA 2022.23 . Taihu stones are valued for their natural shapes and sculptural qualities and are a cultural peculiarity. These perforated limestones were originally sourced from Lake Tai in southeast China from where they got their names. Large ones were set up like sculptures in gardens, like the one in this painting.

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.