清 沙馥 松鼠葡萄 扇面|Squirrel and Grapes by Sha Fu

This is "Squirrel and Grapes" by the late-Qing painter Sha Fu, dated 1894. It began as a folding fan, an intimate object meant for a sleeve or a desk, and was later mounted as an album leaf so the painting could be preserved. Today it sits quietly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

What draws the eye is the precision. Look at the squirrel's tiny alert face and its forepaws gripping the vine: every hair is a separate, controlled brushstroke. The grapes on the left have a translucent depth that comes from layered washes on alum paper, and the curling central leaf, with its vein-work done by a split brush, frames the animal like a stage.

Sha Fu lived from 1831 to 1906, through the long unraveling of the Qing dynasty. He was prolific and respected, but the global market for Chinese painting has been unforgiving to names outside a small canon. His fame rank among all artists tracked is 3,424th; a fan painting of this quality can go at auction for well under a thousand US dollars.

That number is not the painting's measure. But it tells you something real about how art history is written, and who gets left in the margins.