Conversation in a Thatched Hut (late 1200s): Art, History and Details

Conversation in a Thatched Hut (late 1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Two scholars in white robes sit conversing in a simple hut before a bamboo grove. The foreground and right side are filled with two spindly trees and a grove of banana trees among rugged rocks and precipices, all drawn in ink outline and filled in with opaque blue and green pigment. Landscapes painted in blue and green mineral pigments often allude to the past or to paradise. Here the color may suggest that surrounded by nature, the scholars could escape the hassles of the chaotic world.

Object facts

• Title: Conversation in a Thatched Hut
• Date: late 1200s
• Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: album leaf; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 26 x 27.3 cm (10 1/4 x 10 3/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1975.21

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1975.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 63, no. 2 (February 1976): 31–71.
• Kohara, Hironobu 古原宏伸. Kō Kōbō, Gei San, Ō Mō, Go Shin 黃公望, 倪瓚, 王蒙, 吳鎭. Tōkyō: Chūō Kōronsha, 1979.
• Lee, Sherman E. "River Village: Fisherman's Joy." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Vol. 66, No. 7 (Oct., 1979), pp. 271–288.

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.