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Your galleryPoetic Thoughts in a Forest Pavilion
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Look at the empty pavilion under the bamboo and the tall rock, then across the wide band of bare paper to the low hills on the far shore.
Ni Zan, one of the Four Masters of the late Yuan, painted this about 1371, three years into the Ming dynasty, according to the Art Institute. His poem at the upper right imagines scholars gathered to recite to the music of strings in a pavilion shaded by bamboo and trees, and he says he made the painting and poem as a gift for a man he calls the multi-talented Youxin. Among the collectors’ seals is one of Wang Shimin, whose own landscapes hang in the Orthodox School room.
Hanging scroll; ink on paper · 124 × 50.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Chinese painting: Liao and Yuan
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Poetic Thoughts in a Forest Pavilion 林堂詩思圖
- Artist
- Ni Zan 倪瓚 (Chinese, 1301–1374)
- Date
- Ming dynasty (1368–1644), c. 1371
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- 124 × 50.5 cm (48 7/8 × 19 15/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Kate S. Buckingham Endowment; purchased with funds provided by of the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
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.