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Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence

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Follow the old man’s staff and his gaze, then find the orange chrysanthemums growing by the low fence at the lower right.

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Another leaf from the same album evokes the poet and recluse Tao Yuanming (365 to 427), whose poem Drinking Wine has him picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence and gazing calmly at the southern mountains. An old man with a staff walks among bare trees, with orange chrysanthemums by a low fence. The Cleveland Museum of Art counts Hua Yan among the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, painters who turned away from orthodox ideas.

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Album leaf; ink and light color on paper · Album, closed: 15.4 x 18.5 x 3.1 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Qing

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Details and source

Museum title
Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence
Artist
Hua Yan (Chinese, 1682–c. 1765)
Date
1745
Medium
Album leaf; ink and light color on paper
Dimensions
Album, closed: 15.4 x 18.5 x 3.1 cm (6 1/16 x 7 5/16 x 1 1/4 in.); Each painting: 11.2 x 13.1 cm (4 7/16 x 5 3/16 in.)
Credit line
Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial 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.

Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence · Hua Yan, 1745
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Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems:  Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence, Hua Yan

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