Flowering Crab Apple (1500): Art, History and Details

Flowering Crab Apple (1500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Shen Zhou (Chinese, 1427–1509).

The work and its context

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

Shen Zhou painted a broken branch (zhezhi 折枝) of crab apple, a fragment of nature rather than the full plant in its natural context. Shen uses calligraphic outlines in pure ink to depict the flower petals. The swift yet precise brushstrokes together with the slight S-shaped branch convey vitality. The inscription is a poem written by the artist, commenting on the lovely color and melancholic aura of the crab apple blossom. Shen Zhou is the founder of the Wu School, a group of scholars and officials active around Suzhou in eastern China, known for practicing painting and calligraphy in a refined and elegant style.

Object facts

• Title: Flowering Crab Apple
• Date: 1500
• Creator attribution: Shen Zhou (Chinese, 1427–1509)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 87 x 28.5 cm (34 1/4 x 11 1/4 in.); Overall with knobs: 238.5 x 52.5 cm (93 7/8 x 20 11/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1997.101

A detail from the museum

Shen Zhou painted this is an informal and rapidly done presentation picture when he was 74 years old.

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Naitō, Torajirō 內藤虎次郎. Min shitaika gafu [明四大家畫譜 = Paintings by the four great masters of the Ming dynasty]. Osaka: Hakubundō, 1924.
• Shinaga kenkyūkai [支那畫硏究會 = Research Club of Chinese paintings]. Shina meiga senshū 支那名畫選集. Kyōto: Nakajima Kyōeisha, Shōwa 2-4 [1927-1929].
• Saitō, Etsuzō 齊藤悦藏 and Torajirō Naitō 內藤虎次郎. Tōan-zō shogafu 董盦蔵書畫譜. Ōsaka: Hakubundō, 1928.

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.