Shen Zhou
1427–1509 · Chinese painting: Ming · 14 works
Shen Zhou was a painter and poet associated with the scholarly culture of Suzhou during China’s Ming dynasty. He studied earlier masters’ brushwork while giving familiar landscape forms a personal character. Pictures could be shared among friends and accompanied by poems, joining an imagined or remembered place with the circumstances of a life. His mountains and trees invite attention to both the scene and its making: a few repeated marks can establish a rocky slope, a stand of trees, or a reflective mood.
14 works · 1446–1504
Compare the brush marks in trees and rocks, and notice where writing enters the image. How do these different kinds of marks share the space?
1446–1480 · 4 works
Walk these 4In the museum: Chinese painting: Ming room · 2 works
1491–1504 · 10 works
Walk these 10Shen Zhou turned to painting in midlife and is seen as the founder of the Wu School, centered in his native Suzhou. This room follows him for more than thirty years, from a towering autumn flower scroll of 1468 to four leaves of his Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, near Suzhou, and a crab apple branch painted at seventy-four.
In the museum: Chinese painting: Ming room · 5 works
Distant View of Tiger Hill from the Canal Mooring, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Five Sages Terrace, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Fool's Spring, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Nodding Stone Terrace, Tiger Hill, and the Thousand-Man Seat, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Pine Retreat, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Sword Spring, Tiger Hill, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Thousand Acres of Clouds, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
The Thousand Buddha Hall and the Pagoda of the "Cloudy Cliff" Monastery, from Twelve Views of Tiger Hill, Suzhouafter 1490
Flowering Crab Apple1500- Clouds over the River before RainMing dynasty (1368–1644), dated 1504
