Children at Play (1508): Art, History and Details

Children at Play (1508) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Xia Kui (Chinese, active c. 1405–1445).

The work and its context

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

Sixteen children engage in scholarly, religious, and military activities, representing the popular “one hundred boys” theme expressing the wish for abundant, successful male offspring. Such paintings conveying auspicious wishes were often displayed during the New Year festival season. Two older boys wear small crowns with red tassels. Another child with a mask holds a brush in one hand, a rice measure in the other. He stands on a low table imitating Kuixing, the God of Examinations and servant to the God of Literature.

Object facts

• Title: Children at Play
• Date: 1508
• Creator attribution: Xia Kui (Chinese, active c. 1405–1445)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Painting: 62.5 x 113.7 cm (24 5/8 x 44 3/4 in.); Overall with knobs: 214 x 137 cm (84 1/4 x 53 15/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1915.110

A detail from the museum

In the foreground on the right are three boys playing a kind of blind man’s bluff.

Collection credit

Gift of Charles L. Freer

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.