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Your galleryWashing the Feet (from the Dusty World)
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Find the scholar dipping his feet over the end of the boat while the boatman waits with his pole, then look across the river to the pagoda on the far hills.
A scholar in a boat cools his feet in the stream, seen from high above a wide river landscape. The motif comes from the Songs of Chu, written before 256 BCE: one washes one’s cap strings in the Canglang River when its water is clear, and one’s feet when it is muddy, meaning that a virtuous man stays out of a corrupt government. Wen Boren’s couplet at the upper right speaks of shaking out one’s robes on a high peak. Whether he meant his own times is not clear.
Hanging scroll mounted on a panel; ink and color on paper · Image: 170.2 x 79.4 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Chinese painting: Ming
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Washing the Feet (from the Dusty World)
- Artist
- Wen Boren (Chinese, 1502–1575)
- Date
- 1570
- Medium
- Hanging scroll mounted on a panel; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 170.2 x 79.4 cm (67 x 31 1/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1502–1575
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.