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Your galleryCat and Butterfly
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- Where does your eye go next?
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Find the cat’s small face peering out of its round mass of pale fur, then the butterfly at the upper right.
From the same album of 1788, this leaf looks down on a long-haired cat sitting in the grass, an unusual view that the Cleveland Museum of Art finds humorous. The subject is also a pun: in Chinese, cat and butterfly sound like mao die, a word for a person in their eighties, so the painting wishes Min Zhen’s friend a long life.
album leaf, ink on paper · Sheet: 29 x 18.4 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Qing
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Cat and Butterfly
- Artist
- Min Zhen (Chinese, 1730–after 1788)
- Date
- 1788
- Medium
- album leaf, ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 29 x 18.4 cm (11 7/16 x 7 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.