Song of a Fisherman
Wang Wen (Chinese)
Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Medium
- Handscroll; ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 28.6 × 605.8 cm (11 1/4 × 238 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- China
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- The Orientals Sundry Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Wang Wen exemplified the life of the scholar-official in Ming dynasty China. He retired from government service to his lakeside retreat and pursued painting, calligraphy, and poetry. For this painting, Wang Wen wrote a poem (also entitled “Song of a Fisherman”), which includes several allusions to moral integrity. This poem displays the artist’s distinctively fluid, cursive “draft script” (cao shu). Its first section reads as follows:
Most men of the world fish with crooked hooks: I alone trust in hooks, but never in fancy baits. After rain, I carry my long pole to the terrace edge and dangle if from among pines and clouds above the ripples of Qi. (translated by Irving Yucheng Lo)
Qi refers to a river in north-central China. This river is cited in several verses of the Shijing (Book of Odes) – a compilation of more than three hundred poems datable between about 1000 and 600 B.C that extol men of principle. Government officials often alluded to these poems to convey Confucian teachings.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
