Miniature Album with Figures and Landscape (Three Men)

Rendered with brisk, expressive brushwork, the painting employs vivid pigments for the costumes against a subdued, muted landscape background. The contrast between the bright figures and the soft tonal field heightens the sense of movement, while the loose handling of line and color reflects a departure from meticulous court painting toward a more spontaneous visual language.

Created in 1822, the work remained in private hands before entering the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection. Its attribution to Zeng Yangdong, a known painter of the late Qing, is based on stylistic analysis and documented signatures, confirming its place within the artist’s oeuvre and the broader tradition of miniature album paintings.