Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Bird and Peach-Blossom Branch
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: A Bird and Peach-Blossom Branch is a 1625 unspecified by Chen Hongshou, a Chinese Orthodox School work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A delicate bird perches on a peach-blossom branch. Pink petals frame its curved beak and soft feathers. Chen Hongshou painted it in ink that bleeds slightly, giving the petals a fuzzy look. This isn’t just a bird picture. The bird’s head tilts like it’s listening. It feels alive, but also stiff—like a careful copy of something old. Try looking up Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598/99–1652) next.
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.…
Read the full account in the museum source.
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