Fish and Rocks
1604
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1604
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Fish and Rocks is a 1604 unspecified by Bada Shanren, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a single fish, dark and simple, swimming near a jagged rock. Its eye looks up, like it’s staring right at you. The background is just blank—no water, no plants—so the fish and rock stand out. Bada Shanren painted this during the Qing Dynasty. He was once a prince but lost everything when the Manchus took over. His art became a way to speak without words. Check out more of his work at The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Bada Shanren, also called Zhu Da, a 17th-century painter who rejected conventions in favor of an individual, personal expression, is known for his unorthodox compositions of fish, flowers, birds, and rocks. Fish in his paintings are often looking upward toward heaven, swimming in a pond of undefined space. As a member of the Ming imperial family, Zhu Da lost his princely status and hid in a monastery when the Manchus, foreigners from the north, established the Qing dynasty in 1644. This scroll may have some autobiographical meaning, representing fish as leftover subjects ( yimin ) who lived…
After each poem, Bada Shanren used his so-called jixingyin seal 屐形印, which resembles the impression of a shoe on soft mud.
Read the full account in the museum source.
