Cleveland Museum of Art

Landscape with Woodcutters Returning Home

Date: 1200s
Medium: hanging scroll, ink on silk
Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
Department: Chinese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art

In late Song dynasty Chinese Chan Buddhist temples, paintings of landscapes, animals, or plants frequently took the place of deities. This hanging scroll features the humble life of woodcutters in nature an is in keeping with the Chan emphasis on simplicity and on the spiritual benefits of manual labor. executed in broad, quickly applied washes and punctuated by dark dots and texture strokes, the work is inscribed by Xuzhou Pudu, a priest at Wanshou temple near the Southern Song capital at Lin'an (modern Hangzhou). A landscape with identical measurements in a Japanese private collection is also inscribed by Xuzhou. They may have been a pair of flanking scrolls in a triptych.

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