Cleveland Museum of Art

Brush Holder with Figures in Landscape and Poetic Inscription by Wang Meilin from Jiading

Wang Meilin

Date

1800s

Medium

carved bamboo

Culture

China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Daoguang reign (1821-50)

Department

Chinese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This bamboo brush holder shows a scholar inside a mountain retreat under trees. On its back side, a cliff inscribed with a text by the Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) describes the carefree life of a scholar among family and servants in the countryside. The text in cursive script style calligraphy ( xingshu ) says: A ten-acre [home], a five-acre yard with a water pool, and a thousand bamboos. Don’t say the field is narrow, or the location remote. It is enough to accommodate the knee and rest the shoulder. It has a hall and a yard, a bridge and a boat. It has books and wine, songs and string [instruments]. An old man in the midst of it, his white beard flowing. [He] is moderate and satisfied, has no demands and needs. Like a bird he chooses a branch, builds a nest, and rests at ease. Like a fish in a swamp, that does not know how wide the ocean is. . . . All I like, lies before me. I drink a cup of wine from time to time, recite a [poem], wife and children play, chicken and dogs are at leisure, and I will grow old here. Bamboo was considered a humble material that suited the Confucian ideals of frugality and modesty.

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