Five Pine Trees (1747): Art, History and Details

Five Pine Trees (1747) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Li Shan (Chinese, c. 1686–1762).

The work and its context

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

Li Shan was born into a family of scholars and officials in Yangzhou. The wealth and status of Li's family assured him an educational and cultural advantage, including his appointment at court. The subjects Li Shan chose to paint—orchids, bamboo, pines, and flowers—reflected his literati background. Five Pine Trees, painted late in his career, is an unconventional work. Rather than having focused on a realistic treatment of the subject, Li created the trees with an interplay of richly modulated strokes, while he utilized a semicursive script among the branches to illustrate the kinship between painting and calligraphy.

Object facts

• Title: Five Pine Trees
• Date: 1747
• Creator attribution: Li Shan (Chinese, c. 1686–1762)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Qianlong reign (1736–95)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 199.9 x 94.3 cm (78 11/16 x 37 1/8 in.); Overall: 260 x 98 cm (102 3/8 x 38 9/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1976.112

A detail from the museum

The writing among the branches illustrates the kinship between painting and calligraphy.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cheng, Qi 程琦. Xuan hui tang shu hua lu 萱暉堂書畫錄. Hong Kong: Xuan hui tang, 1972.
• 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.
• Williams, Marjorie. Chinese Painting--an Escape from the "Dusty" World. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981.

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.