Herdboys and Buffalo in Landscape (1200s): Art, History and Details

Herdboys and Buffalo in Landscape (1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Guo Min (Chinese, mid-late 1200s).

The work and its context

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

Herdboys tend their buffalo in a bucolic landscape by a winding stream. Guo Min emphasizes the massive forms and mighty power of the animals, transforming them into forces of nature. The poem on this scroll reads: "Together, they wade through the middle of the stream, Mindless of perils in the journey. The grass grows tall in the village ahead, While the mist and rain spread far and wide."

Object facts

• Title: Herdboys and Buffalo in Landscape
• Date: 1200s
• Creator attribution: Guo Min (Chinese, mid-late 1200s)
• Culture: China, Qixian, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 91 x 56 cm (35 13/16 x 22 1/16 in.); Overall with knobs: 193 x 75.4 cm (76 x 29 11/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1999.216.2

A detail from the museum

Tending water buffalos has traditionally been the task of young boys and can still be seen in rural areas of Southern China today.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kokka no. 355 (1919) pp. 202-206.
• Harada, Kinjirō 原田謹次郎. Nihon genzai Shina meiga mokuroku日本現在支那名畫目錄. Tōkyō: Ōtsuka Kōgeisha, 1938.
• Kaikodo (Autumn 1999), no. 2, pp. 94-95, 246-49.

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.