Album of Miscellaneous Subjects, Leaf 5 (early 1650s): Art, History and Details

Album of Miscellaneous Subjects, Leaf 5 (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:

Fan Qi's painting on the fifth leaf evokes Zuo Si's poetic line: I shake my robe atop the cliff of thousand ren. The calligraphy by Zhou Yi adjacent to the painting reads: That stone path surrounded by streams—for whom was it created? Leaning on my staff, I walk and hum, arriving alone. As soon as I ascend to gaze at these mountains, my happiness increases, Every morning the moistening dew makes the green moss slippery.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Miscellaneous Subjects, Leaf 5
• 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: 1975.22.5

A detail from the museum

Barren tree branches on the peak and the bushes' reddish foliage give the scene an autumnal feel.

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.