Public data from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Learn more
About the Artwork
This masterfully composed landscape in light colors and delicate brushwork is an image of the water-rich Jiangnan region in southeast China, where Wu Bin was active as an artist. Embedded in rolling hills along lakesides and streams nestle cityscapes hosting numerous spring festivities. Lantern displays and street performances in the villages salute the New Year, and are interwoven with scenes of farming, fishing, and silk making. In one scene in the middle ground, an ox made of clay under a canopy is lead in a procession to an architectural compound, a ceremony known as whipping the spring ox in hope for a good harvest.
Inscriptions
Artist's inscription, signature, and seal at upper right corner: Painted in the mid-winter of the gengzi year [1600]. Zhiyin 枝隱, Wu Bin 吳彬 [seal] Wenzhong 文中.; 9 additional seals: 5 of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–95); 3 of the Jiaqing emperor (r. 1796–1820); 1 of the Xuantong emperor (r. 1909–11).
Provenance
Qing imperial collection (seals of Emperors Qianlong, r. 1736–1795; Jiaqing, r. 1796–1820; and Xuanzong, r. 1821–1850), Beijing, China ?–1959: (Walter Hochstadter [1914–2007], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1959–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
1000 Jahre Chinesische Malerei. Haus der Kunst, Munich, Mùnich, Germany (organizer) (October 16-December 13, 1959). Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982). Highlights of Asian Paintings from The Cleveland Museum of Art. Nara National Museum (organizer) (February 21-March 29, 1998); Suntory Museum of Art (April 28-June 21, 1998). Greeting the Spring (Chinese art rotation, galleries 240a, 239, 241c). The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 11-August 13, 2017).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Wu Bin (Chinese, active c. 1591–1626)
- Date
- 1600
- Medium
- handscroll; ink and light color on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.3 x 252.8 cm (13 1/2 x 99 1/2 in.); Overall: 35 x 1022.2 cm (13 3/4 x 402 7/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1959.45
More by Wu Bin in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009451
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