Clouds Visiting a Mountain Retreat (1633): Art, History and Details

Clouds Visiting a Mountain Retreat (1633) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tao Hong (Chinese, active c. 1610–1640).

The work and its context

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

Little is known about Tao Hong who settled in Nanking in the latter part of his life. His son was a friend of the leading Nanjing school artist Gong Xian (on display nearby). When the Ming dynasty collapsed in 1644, Tao joined the loyalist resistance in Yunnan province. By 1645 the Manchu invaders had defeated the Yunnanese forces, prompting Tao to flee to Burma, where he died shortly thereafter. Only five of Tao Hong’s works are known to exist, of which this painting is the largest.

Object facts

• Title: Clouds Visiting a Mountain Retreat
• Date: 1633
• Creator attribution: Tao Hong (Chinese, active c. 1610–1640)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on silk
• Dimensions: Painting: 176.4 x 101 cm (69 7/16 x 39 3/4 in.); Overall with knobs: 290 x 121.3 cm (114 3/16 x 47 3/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1971.19

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman. “To See Big within Small: Hsiao-Chung-Chien-Ta.” The Burlington Magazine 114, no. 830 (May 1972): 312+314–323.
• Lee, Sherman Emery, and James Robinson. The Colors of Ink: Chinese Paintings and Related Ceramics from the Cleveland Museum of Art. New York: Asia Society; distributed by New York Graphic Society, 1974.
• Vanderstappen, Harrie A. "Seventeenth Century." In Artists and Traditions: Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture, pp. 149–168. Christian F. Murck, editor. Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1976.

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.