Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence (1745): Art, History and Details

Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence (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:

Hua Yan’s painting of a gentleman admiring orange chrysanthemums evokes a quote from the poem Drinking Wine by poet and recluse Tao Qian (also called Tao Yuanming, AD 365–427): "I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, and serenely I gaze at the southern mountains."

Object facts

• Title: Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence
• 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: 1982.68.3

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.