Brush Holder with Figures in Landscape and Poetic Inscription by Wang Meilin from Jiading (1800s): Art, History and Details

Brush Holder with Figures in Landscape and Poetic Inscription by Wang Meilin from Jiading (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Wang Meilin (Chinese, active c. 1825).

The work and its context

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

This bamboo brush holder shows a scholar inside a mountain retreat under trees. On its back side, a cliff inscribed with a text by the Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) describes the carefree life of a scholar among family and servants in the countryside. The text in cursive script style calligraphy (xingshu) says: A ten-acre [home], a five-acre yard with a water pool, and a thousand bamboos. Don’t say the field is narrow, or the location remote. It is enough to accommodate the knee and rest the shoulder. It has a hall and a yard, a bridge and a boat. It has books and wine, songs and string [instruments]. An old man in the midst of it, his white beard flowing. [He] is moderate and satisfied, has no demands and needs. Like a bird he chooses a branch, builds a nest, and rests at ease. Like a fish in a swamp, that does not know how wide the ocean is. . . . All I like, lies before me. I drink a cup of wine from time to time, recite a [poem], wife and children play, chicken and dogs are at leisure, and I will grow old here.

Object facts

• Title: Brush Holder with Figures in Landscape and Poetic Inscription by Wang Meilin from Jiading
• Date: 1800s
• Creator attribution: Wang Meilin (Chinese, active c. 1825)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Daoguang reign (1821-50)
• Type: Wood
• Technique: carved bamboo
• Dimensions: Overall: 16 x 12.4 cm (6 5/16 x 4 7/8 in.)
• Collection: China - Qing Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1988.75

A detail from the museum

Bamboo was considered a humble material that suited the Confucian ideals of frugality and modesty.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "The Year in Review for 1988." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 2 (1989): 30-75.

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.