Dream Journey to Mt. Tiantai (1814): Art, History and Details

Dream Journey to Mt. Tiantai (1814) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Qian Du (Chinese, 1763–1844).

The work and its context

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

When he painted Mt. Tiantai 天台山, Qian Du was a mature artist with a distinctive style that balanced refinement and “studied awkwardness.” He included the site’s famed features: the crescent-shaped stone bridge arching across the waterfall and surrounded by dense cliffs. Rows of pine and other vegetation appear in the crevices above and below the mountain. The twisting trunks and branches are left in outline, encased within the variegated foliage. In a pavilion at the center, a man and a woman look back to the lower right, across the ravine and toward the cascading water. Beyond and to the left, two simple mounds are backed by hills that stretch into the distance. Qian Du left space above the hills for an inscription describing the circumstances that gave rise to the painting. Chen Wenshu, family friend and patron to Qian Du, had dreamt of a journey to Tiantai, a mountain famed for both its natural beauty and its associations with legends and myths. This short handscroll was based on Chen’s description of his dream journey, on which he marveled at the scenery and encountered a goddess. Six months after the painting’s completion, Qian transcribed his friend’s longer poetic reminiscence on paper mounted after the painting. The landscape of the painting was not based on the physical site, which likely neither man had visited in 1814, but rather on the mythic tradition of Tiantai. It caused turbulence in the mind of the poet and provided inspiration to the painter.

Object facts

• Title: Dream Journey to Mt. Tiantai
• Date: 1814
• Creator attribution: Qian Du (Chinese, 1763–1844)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Jiaqing reign (1796-1820)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 29.8 x 72 cm (11 3/4 x 28 3/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1975.75

A detail from the museum

The man and woman in the pavilion likely represent Chen Wenshu and the mysterious presence he encountered on his dream journey to Mt. Tiantai.

Collection credit

Gift of Jean-Pierre Dubosc

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.
• 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.