Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholar with Staff and Brush

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholar with Staff and Brush

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

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Artist: Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598–1652)
Medium: Album leaf; ink and color on silk
Size: Overall: 30.2 x 26.7 cm (11 7/8 x 10 1/2 in.)
Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

The twenty paintings in this double album by Chen Hongshou include landscapes, figures, and flowers. It also has one leaf featuring a woman, an often-used subject not found in the other albums from the latter part of his career. His late works are wonderful summations of Chen's peculiar and quirky art—archaistic, hyper-refined—but without accompanying shallowness or sentimentality.

His figures and landscapes in the late albums are miniaturized, not unlike the small Chinese gardens, or the carefully selected small table rocks or old roots used for contemplation to see the world in miniature. This loss of scale is quite deliberate and reflects the psychological situation of a depressed class like the Ming loyalist officials and scholars, deprived of their integrity and honor, and forced to lead a diminished and restricted existence.

More by Chen Hongshou

Vase of Flowers

Vase of Flowers

Chen Hongshou, 1350–1750

Lady Xuanwen Giving Instruction on the Rites of Zhou

Lady Xuanwen Giving Instruction on the Rites of Zhou

Chen Hongshou, 1638

Scholar-recluse in blue-green landscape

Scholar-recluse in blue-green landscape

Chen Hongshou, 1633

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Daoist and Crane in Autumn Landscape

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Daoist and Crane in Autumn Landscape

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholars in a Garden

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholars in a Garden

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Lotus and Rocks

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Lotus and Rocks

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Landscape

Chen Hongshou, mid-17th century

Lotuses and Rock

Lotuses and Rock

Paintings after Ancient Masters:Travelers in an Autumn Landscape

Paintings after Ancient Masters:Travelers in an Autumn Landscape

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Bird and Peach-Blossom Branch

Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Bird and Peach-Blossom Branch

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Autumn Landscape

Paintings after Ancient Masters: Autumn Landscape

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Lohan [after Guanxiu]

Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Lohan [after Guanxiu]

Chen Hongshou, 1598–1652

Visually similar

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Three Laughers of Tiger Ravine

Yosa Buson, second half 18th century

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Ren Bonian, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), dated 1883

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Cao Guojiu (left) and Lan Caihe (right) [left of the set Daoist Immortals]

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Kanō Sansetsu, 1646

Three women beneath a plum tree at night

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Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1796

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Yang Sheng'an Taking an Excursion with Flowers on His Head

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Katsushika Hokusai, 1760-1849

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A Scholar Contemplating a Waterfall

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Yosa Buson, 1760s

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