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Your galleryOne of Sixteen Album Leaves
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Watch how each bamboo leaf is a single stroke, broad at its base and sharp at its tip, laid over the soft gray wash of the rock.
Hu Gongshou brushed bamboo in black ink across a pale gray rock, inside a circle painted on silk. The Art Institute dates the leaf 1882 and records it as one of sixteen album leaves. The Shanghai Museum calls Hu, a painter from Huating, now Songjiang in Shanghai, a pioneer of the Shanghai School who excelled at landscapes and flowers.
Album leaf; ink on silk · Painting: 28.3 × 28.9 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Chinese painting: Qing
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Details and source
- Museum title
- One of Sixteen Album Leaves
- Artist
- Hu Gongshou 胡公壽 (Chinese, 1823-1886)
- Date
- Qing dynasty (1644–1911), dated 1882
- Medium
- Album leaf; ink on silk
- Dimensions
- Painting: 28.3 × 28.9 cm (11 1/8 × 11 3/8 in.); Album leaf: 30.5 × 36.2 cm (12 × 14 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Florence Ayscough and Harley Farnsworth MacNair
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Artist’s life 1823–1886
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.




