Paintings after Ancient Masters: Volume 2
1625
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1625
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Paintings after Ancient Masters: Volume 2 is a 1625 unspecified by Chen Hongshou, a Ming Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a small, careful painting of a woman in old-fashioned robes, standing alone in a garden. Chen Hongshou painted this during the Ming dynasty, when artists often copied ancient styles. But he didn’t just copy—he made the old feel new again. His lines are sharp, almost like a cartoon, yet the details feel alive. To see more of his quirky, refined work, look up Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598/99–1652).
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 album was treasured by 5 generations of the Weng family, from imperial tutor Weng Tonghe (1830–1904) through Wango Weng (1918–2020), an art historian, connoisseur, and filmmaker.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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