Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Listening to the Qin (1745): Art, History and Details

Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Listening to the Qin (1745) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hua Yan (Chinese, 1682–c. 1765).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The figure in pink is playing a qin, a seven-stringed zither. The sound of the musical instrument symbolizes the harmony between humanity and nature; literati are often depicted playing qin in landscape settings.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Listening to the Qin
• Date: 1745
• Creator attribution: Hua Yan (Chinese, 1682–c. 1765)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: album leaf; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Album, closed: 15.4 x 18.5 x 3.1 cm (6 1/16 x 7 5/16 x 1 1/4 in.); Each painting: 11.2 x 13.1 cm (4 7/16 x 5 3/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1982.68.11

Collection credit

Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review for 1982.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 70, no. 1, 1983, pp. 3–55.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.