Flight of Geese
Artist unknown (Chinese, 14th century?)
Late Yuan (1279–1368) or early Ming dynasty (1368-1644)
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 64.8 × 38.1 cm (25 1/2 × 15 in.)
- Culture
- China
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- Gift of The Orientals
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This landscape is precisely rendered in a detailed manner that blends the Song dynasty (960-1279) tradition with newer stylistic elements. It also combines standard motifs of the landscape and flower-and-bird genres. Scattered across the foreground are mandarin ducks, lotus, and bamboo, a traditional grouping drawn from flower-and-bird painting of the Song dynasty. But the trees growing from the right side of the same area are treated in a contemporary, early fourteenth century manner. These trees lead the eye upward into the middle distance, where geese taking flight over rushes signify autumn, a seasonal reference confirmed by the bare treetops. The touches of color used to highlight various forms in the foreground, and the blue-green coloring applied to some of the rocks, are both archaizing features that emulate painting of the Tang dynasty (618-907). In the background are monumental mountain forms, convincingly portrayed as if shrouded in mist, derived from the Song landscape tradition.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
