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Your galleryBamboo, Rock, and Tall Tree
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- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
See how few strokes make the tall tree, its leaves set down as small dark dabs, then compare it with the bamboo and the pale rock behind.
In his poem at the upper right, Ni Zan writes that in the chilly, rainy season of the wheat harvest he fought low spirits by copying with his brush, comforted by a friend who sent him food. He signs as Yunlinzi, and another poem on the scroll remembers him as the Daoist of the Cloudy Forest. The Asian Art Museum describes his art as pale in ink and dry in brush, with sparse vegetation. Owners and admirers added four more inscriptions and fourteen seals.
hanging scroll; ink on paper · Image: 67.3 x 36.8 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Liao and Yuan
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Bamboo, Rock, and Tall Tree
- Artist
- Ni Zan (Chinese, 1301–1374)
- Date
- c. 1300s
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 67.3 x 36.8 cm (26 1/2 x 14 1/2 in.); Overall with knobs: 231.4 x 64.2 cm (91 1/8 x 25 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1301–1374
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.