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Bamboo and Insects
Wu Bing (Chinese, active 1190–1194)
late 1100s
- Medium
- Album leaf; fan painting, ink on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 24.8 x 26.8 cm (9 3/4 x 10 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
- 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
Wu Bing, a native of Piling, gained Empress Li’s favor and served as a painter-in-attendance at the court in Hangzhou during the Shaoxi reign (1190–94). The round fan painting shows a dragonfly hovering over a stalk of bamboo, a bush cricket (luowei) perching on a leaf, and a flying wasp.
Yellow leaf tips suggest the late summer or early autumn season. The chirping of the cricket sounds similar to the sound of a working loom; the insect is therefore also called weaving lady (fangzhi niang). The weaving season starts when the weather is about to turn cold—the cricket symbolizes early autumn.
