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Palace ladies watching the sunset
Formerly attributed to Zhao Boju (ca. 1120s-ca.1162)
16th-17th century
- Medium
- Ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W (image): 127.1 x 30 cm (50 1/16 x 11 13/16 in)
- Culture
- Chinese
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Charles Lang Freer
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
This painting shows a generic palace constructed at the foot of towering mountains. On a terrace behind the gates of the compound, several palace ladies have gathered to watch the sunset (or sunrise) as it reddens the skies and waters. Flecks of gold added to the paint augment the dazzling effect. The painting bears the spurious signature of Zhao Boju, an imperial relative who worked in the academy at the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) court. A specialist in the blue-and-green style originated almost five centuries earlier by Li Sixun (651-716/18), himself a member of the Tang imperial family, Zhao was especially renowned for his detailed depictions of palaces and other architectural motifs in landscape settings. No original works by Li or Zhao survive and, other than the most superficial of connections, neither the execution nor the design of this scroll bear any particular relationship to the extant compositions more plausibly attributed to either man. Instead, this painting falls into the general category of works that derive from the mid-Ming dynasty resurrection of the meticulous landscape and architecture style ushered in by the famous painter Qiu Ying (ca. 1494-1552).…
