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Landscape with Poems
View through Harvard Museums
This long handscroll comprises a four-character frontispiece, a landscape painted in ink and color on silk, and a poem written in ink on paper in running script ("xingshu"). Both the painting and poem are signed "Zhengming", indicating that both works were created by the celebrated Ming-dynasty literati painter Wen Zhengming (1470-1559). Executed in the so-called "blue-green" manner (an archaistic mode of painting that evokes the vibrant malachite-blue and azurite-green mineral pigments used by early Chinese painters to color natural scenery), the painting depicts several figures--probably scholars and servants, based on the dress and accoutrements carried--positioned alone or in pairs at various points in the landscape. Figures are shown meandering along mountain a paths, gazing at a waterfall or across calm waters, or quietly meditating while floating on a skiff. The poem that follows the painting was written a year later than the painting, but it makes elegant reference to the landscape imagery that precedes it.
Department of Asian Art
[Through?] likely Beijing sold; to Weng Xincun (1791-1862) by ineritance; to Weng Tonghe (1830-1904) by bequest; to Weng Zhenghan by bequest; to Weng Ansun by bequest; to Weng Zhilan (1883-1919) by bequest; to Weng Wan-go H.C. Weng (born 1918) 1919 gift; to Harvard Art Museums 2010.
NOTE: The Weng-Family collection was assembled mainly by Weng Tonghe (1830-1904) though Weng Tonghe acquired a few works by inheritance from his father Weng Xincun (1791-1862). The majority of the works in the Weng-Family collection were acquired during Weng Tonghe's years of service in Beijing in the mid- to late nineteenth century. This scroll by Wen Zhengming likely was acquired in Beijing at that time. Thus the probable direct line of provenance for this scroll is as follows:
Possibly collected by Weng Xincun (1791-1862)
Owned by Weng Tonghe (1830-1904); possibly acquired by inheritance from Weng Xincun likely acquired by purchase in Beijing
Weng Tonghe (1830-1904) by bequest to Weng Zhenghan
Weng Zhenghan by bequest to Weng Ansun
Weng Ansun by bequest to Weng Zhilan (1883-1919)
Weng Zhilan by bequest to Weng Wan-go H.C. Weng (born 1918); thus Wan-go H.C. Weng the donor to the H/AM acquired the scroll by inheritance in 1919 just a year after his birth. Wan-go H.C. Weng brought the Weng-Family collection including this scroll from China to the United States late in 1948.
The Weng-Collection inventory number is A-22.
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum Gift of Wan-go H. C. Weng in memory of Virginia Dzung Weng
Title: Landscape with Poems
Description:
This long handscroll comprises a four-character frontispiece, a landscape painted in ink and color on silk, and a poem written in ink on paper in running script ("xingshu").
Both the painting and poem are signed "Zhengming", indicating that both works were created by the celebrated Ming-dynasty literati painter Wen Zhengming (1470-1559).
Executed in the so-called "blue-green" manner (an archaistic mode of painting that evokes the vibrant malachite-blue and azurite-green mineral pigments used by early Chinese painters to color natural scenery), the painting depicts several figures--probably scholars and servants, based on the dress and accoutrements carried--positioned alone or in pairs at various points in the landscape.
Figures are shown meandering along mountain a paths, gazing at a waterfall or across calm waters, or quietly meditating while floating on a skiff.
The poem that follows the painting was written a year later than the painting, but it makes elegant reference to the landscape imagery that precedes it.
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