Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Willows
1100s
- Medium
- album leaf; ink and light color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 23.8 x 25.1 cm (9 3/8 x 9 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- China, Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith
- 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
A single scholar in a skiff drifts beneath shade-giving willows and savors his view of mountain peaks just emerging from the pervasive river mist. Round lotus leaves and vertical marsh reeds join with the dotted grasses and curving willow leaves to provide considerable textural variety within the foreground area, which contrasts with the more irregular texturing of the distant mountains. Misty space plays an active part in the composition, and the components of the painting are organized around bisecting diagonals.
