Plum Blossoms
1739
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1739
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Plum Blossoms is a 1739 unspecified by Wang Shishen, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a single plum branch with pink blossoms against a pale gray background. A few dark calligraphy marks sit near the top, each one a poem. The poems add extra meaning. They’re about old dynasties and the Grand Canal, linking the fragile flowers to big history. Look up the Cleveland Museum of Art to see more works like this.
A native of Anhui province, Wang Shishen was a professional painter who specialized in plum blossoms. He moved to Yangzhou in the late 1720s to seek patrons. Here, the daring composition of a flowering plum branch is balanced through the addition of four poems. Wang’s poems evoke nostalgia for the forgotten Six Dynasties period and the glorious Sui dynasty, during which the Grand Canal was built while Yangzhou was the southern capital of the empire. Other inscriptions in the upper part of the painting allude to the fact that Wang had developed blindness in one eye, probably at the time he…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Wang Shishen (1686–1759) was a Chinese painter and calligrapher during the Qing Dynasty.
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