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Your galleryWriting Books under the Pine Trees
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Find the scholar seated in the thatched hall among the tall pines, then compare the poem in old seal script at the upper right with the signature and seal at the left.
Wang Meng signed this leaf as the Woodcutter of Yellow Crane Mountain, the name he took in his retreat in the mountains north of Hangzhou, and painted it for Cao Zhibo (1271 to 1355), whose seal is also on the leaf. His poem pictures a scholar who has written behind a locked gate for so many years that the pine trees he planted have grown old, with bark like dragon scales. The Cleveland Museum of Art notes that Wang spent most of his life in retirement, as the painting suggests.
Album leaf; ink and color on paper · Painting: 39.8 x 56.9 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Liao and Yuan
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Writing Books under the Pine Trees
- Artist
- Wang Meng (Chinese, c. 1308–1385)
- Date
- c. 1308–85
- Medium
- Album leaf; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions
- Painting: 39.8 x 56.9 cm (15 11/16 x 22 3/8 in.); Overall: 67.6 x 71.4 cm (26 5/8 x 28 1/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
- 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.