The Knickknack Peddler
Li Song (Chinese, active c. 1190–c. 1230)
1212
- Medium
- Album leaf; ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 24.1 x 26 cm (9 1/2 x 10 1/4 in.); with mat: 33.3 x 40.5 cm (13 1/8 x 15 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The court artist Li Song from Hangzhou excelled in meticulous depictions of children, peddlers, and their various goods. Here, he captures a dramatic scene of children attacking a snake with a stick and stone. The peddler rushes toward the children, leaving his merchandise unattended. Painted during the reign of emperor Ningzong, the drama unfolding around vulnerable children may allude to Ningzong’s nine sons who died young, leaving him without a direct male descendant.
