Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00010006Paintings after Ancient Masters: A Lady
About the Artwork
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.
Inscriptions
Hongshou. [seal] Hongshou
Provenance
Weng Tonghe 翁同龢 [1830–1904], by descent to Wango H. C. Weng ?–1979: (Wango H. C. Weng 翁萬戈 [1918–2020], Lyme, NH, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1979–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 11-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982); The Asia Society Museum, New York, NY (December 3, 1982-February 28, 1983).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598/99–1652)
- Date
- 1598–1652
- Medium
- album leaf, ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- Overall: 30.2 x 26.7 cm (11 7/8 x 10 1/2 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 1979.27.2.16
More by Chen Hongshou in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00010006
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