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Your galleryThe Mountain of Five Cataracts
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Find the small seated figure near the great tree with its knotholes, then climb to the cliffs where the water falls in steps.
The Cleveland Museum of Art calls this a unique landscape among Chen Hongshou’s works: he used fang, the practice of imitating an old master, here the 10th-century painter Dong Yuan, as a path to a vision of his own. In 1699 the collector Gao Shiqi wrote the long inscription at the top, describing the real mountain, where water spills down in steps from five pools, and keeping company with the scroll by his fire in winter.
hanging scroll; ink on silk · Painting: 118 x 53 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Ming
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Mountain of Five Cataracts
- Artist
- Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598/99–1652)
- Date
- c. 1630
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on silk
- Dimensions
- Painting: 118 x 53 cm (46 7/16 x 20 7/8 in.); Overall: 232.4 x 69.7 cm (91 1/2 x 27 7/16 in.)
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.