Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Fish
c. 1400
- Medium
- hanging scroll, ink and slight color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Painting: 35.1 x 53.3 cm (13 13/16 x 21 in.); Overall with knobs: 124.8 x 72.5 cm (49 1/8 x 28 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Herbert F. Leisy in memory of his wife, Helen Stamp Leisy
- 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
Four fish of various sizes are swimming among aquatic plants. Like in other paintings, the existence of water is suggested in the harmonious movement of the fish and plants. In Chinese, the word for fish (yu) is a homophone for “abundance” and thus the motif has an auspicious connotation.
The painter uses the so-called boneless technique without outlines to shade and texture the bodies of the fish. The smooth transition from dark shades on their backs to their white bellies and the thin transparent fins and tails in light washes accentuated by gills and scales are all executed without contour lines.
