Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00010144On Happiness, Calligraphy in Seal Script Style (zhuanshu)
by Yang Yisun
Also known as: "On the Enjoyment of Life": Calligraphy in Seal Style
About the Artwork
Yang Yisun transcribed this ancient text on six narrow scrolls, starting at the top right and ending at the bottom left. Yang emphasizes the text’s historic nature by using the seal script style found on stone steles and bronze vessels. On Happiness features reflections of a scholar on a leisurely life in the countryside, composed by Han dynasty official Zhongchang Tong, who died the year the Han dynasty collapsed (AD 220). The idyllic life described in the text may bean evocation of the past in a time of national crisis. A decade before Yang wrote these scrolls, Anglo-French forces had looted and burned the Summer Palace in Beijing. At the same time, the domestic Taiping rebellion (1850–64), led by a religious fanatic to overthrow the Qing government, had devastated Yang’s homeland, the Jiangnan region, with an estimated 20 million lives lost.
Provenance
?–1999: (Han Mo Xuan Co., Ltd., Hong Kong, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Power and Possession: Chinese Calligraphy and Inscribed Objects – Chinese Gallery Rotation 240a, 241c. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 13, 2018-February 3, 2019).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Yang Yisun (Chinese, 1813–1881)
- Date
- 1871
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 132.7 x 32.3 cm (52 1/4 x 12 11/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 1999.174.2
More by Yang Yisun in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00010144
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