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Your galleryConversation in Autumn
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Find the two men talking in the thatched cottage, then look through the hole in the old tree trunk at the lower left, where a young servant brings them food.
Hua Yan wrote that on a winter day in 1732, sitting in his mountain pavilion, he painted two lines of verse in the brush manner of the Yuan masters: a guest comes from the dusty world, and in a small cottage the two talk of the sound of autumn. The Cleveland Museum of Art sees in the cool wilderness the inner world of a painter who failed the civil service examination yet kept his pride.
Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper · Overall: 218.5 x 71.7 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Qing
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Conversation in Autumn
- Artist
- Hua Yan (Chinese, 1682–c. 1765)
- Date
- 1732
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 218.5 x 71.7 cm (86 x 28 1/4 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.