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The Poet Lin Bu Wandering in the Moonlight
Du Jin (Chinese, 1446–c. 1519)
late 1400s
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 156.4 x 72.4 cm (61 9/16 x 28 1/2 in.); Overall with knobs: 286.4 x 99 cm (112 3/4 x 39 in.)
- Culture
- China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- 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 Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Lin Bu (967–1028), a Northern Song (960–1127) poet and hermit who lived at the West Lake in Hangzhou, was known for having plum trees for his female companions and cranes for his children. This hanging scroll depicts the poet walking in the moonlight and looking at the plum tree, a scene described in his most well-known poem on plum blossoms.
Surviving works signed by Du Jin are rare and this painting is one of them. Here, the artist used lively brushwork to depict the plum tree and rocks, exemplified in varying dots and strokes, and sweeps in different shades of ink.
