Album of Miscellaneous Subjects, Leaf 4 (early 1650s): Art, History and Details

Album of Miscellaneous Subjects, Leaf 4 (early 1650s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Fan Qi (Chinese, 1616–after 1694).

The work and its context

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

The fourth painting by Fan Qi alludes to Wang Wei's poetic lines: In empty hills, there is no one there; Yet one can hear the sound of conversation. The calligraphic colophon by Xu Fang adjacent to the painting reads: By chance, I start my journey from the watershed to remote regions, Suddenly I see the silhouette of mountains, myriad expanses of green. What is this Feilai Peak which now does not recede? Its rocky walls, linked to heaven, are drenched by a waterfall.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Miscellaneous Subjects, Leaf 4
• Date: early 1650s
• Creator attribution: Fan Qi (Chinese, 1616–after 1694)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: album leaf, ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 12.6 x 17.3 cm (4 15/16 x 6 13/16 in.); Overall: 21 x 22 cm (8 1/4 x 8 11/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1975.22.4

A detail from the museum

There is no sign of human presence in this sunny landscape dominated by a bold flat-topped cliff.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1975.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 63, no. 2, 1976, pp. 31–71.
• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015.

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.