Snow Coloring the World White

About the Artwork

Fa Ruozhen was a scholar-official and prolific poet who focused on painting as his government career declined. The inscription records that he was 78 years old when he painted this handscroll to welcome visitors on a snowy day. At this point in his artistic development, Fa created expressive landscapes and experimented with unconventional brushwork. This handscroll begins at the right with gentle hills dotted with evergreens and bare deciduous trees. By the end, the twisting rocky forms dominate. Fa’s official career spanned the fall of the Han Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the rise of the Manchurian Qing dynasty (1644–1911). While other scholar-officials who declined to serve the Manchus had their reputations enhanced, critics accused Fa of disloyalty for serving in the new bureaucracy. Fa was deeply sensitive about this criticism. In many of his 4,000 known poems, he responded by emphasizing the Confucian virtue of being a good administrator particularly during an unstable time. Fa’s “disorderly” brushwork and distressed landscapes seem to reflect the political upheaval of his era.

Inscriptions

Artist's title on frontispiece, colophon with 6 poems, and 7 seals: [seal] Ch'ien-k'un i ts'ao t'ing. Snow Coloring the World White. Huang-shan lao-jen, Jo-chen, at the age of seventy eight. [2 seals] Fa yin Jo-chen; Huang-shih shih. (Artist's poems are not translated.) In the first month of the keng-wu year [1690], I was seventy-eight years old. On a snowy day I was pleased to have my good son-in-law Ch'eng-ssu and other gentlemen visiting me at my Tz'u-ching Hall at Yellow Hill. I did this snowscape to record the event. [2 seals] Fa Jo-chen; Tun Chai. [2 seals at end of painting] Fa yin Jo-chen; Huang-shih shih. (Translated by Ling-yün (Nora) Shih Liu and Wai-Kam Ho); 12 additional seals: 8 of Ho Kuan-wu (20th c.); 1 of Wang Nan-p'ing (20th c.); 3 unidentified.

Exhibition history

Year in Review: 1979. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 13-March 9, 1980). Mountains, Rocks, and Water: Landscape Painting in Asia. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 2-December 13, 1987). Chinese Gallery 240a Rotation – August 2016. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 1, 2016-February 6, 2017).

Quick Overview

Artist: Fa Ruozhen (Chinese, 1613–1696)
Date: 1690
Medium: handscroll; ink on paper
Dimensions: Image: 29.3 x 297.2 cm (11 9/16 x 117 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: Painting
Department: Chinese Art
Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
Accession no.: 1979.76

Provenance

November 2, 1979: (Sotheby's, New York, NY, November 2, 1979 sale, lot 120, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1979–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

More by Fa Ruozhen in museum collections

Cloudy mountains
Fa Ruozhen
1684 · Painting
Museum collection · via the Metropolitan Museum of ArtAT-00014494

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.