# Paintings after Ancient Masters: Rock, Old Tree, and Bamboo

- By: Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598/99–1652)
- Date: 1598–1652
- Medium: album leaf, ink and color on silk
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: Overall: 30.2 x 26.7 cm (11 7/8 x 10 1/2 in.)
- Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1979.27.2.21)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1979.27.2.21/1979.27.2.21_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The twenty paintings in this double-album by Chen Hongshou include landscapes, figures, and flowers. It also has one leaf featuring a woman, an often-used subject not found in the other albums from the latter part of his career. His late works are wonderful summations of Chen's peculiar and quirky art--archaistic, hyper-refined--but without accompanying shallowness or sentimentality.

His figures and landscapes in the late albums are miniaturized, not unlike the small Chinese gardens, or the carefully selected small table rocks or old roots used for contemplation to see the world in miniature. This loss of scale is quite deliberate and reflects the psychological situation of a depressed class like the Ming loyalist officials and scholars, deprived of their integrity and honor, and forced to lead a diminished and restricted existence.