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Your gallerySummer in the Water Country
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- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
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Compare the rows of short upright strokes that make the distant reed beds with the wet, dark clusters of leaves on the trees in front, and find the small boat.
Gong Xian painted this low, watery country in ink alone in the 1670s; its only mark of his is the seal Banqian, one of his names. The Met notes that by about 1679 he had left behind the densely textured, monumental landscapes of the 1660s for a sparer manner, in which each brushstroke works as calligraphy and as description.
Album leaf; ink on paper · Overall: 25.6 x 32.8 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Qing
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Summer in the Water Country
- Artist
- Gong Xian (Chinese, 1599–1689)
- Date
- 1670s
- Medium
- Album leaf; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 25.6 x 32.8 cm (10 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1619–1689
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.