Insects and Flowers (c. 1900): Art, History and Details

Insects and Flowers (c. 1900) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

More than 26 feet long, this scroll presents insects, reptiles, and plants in delicate brushwork and pale colors, referring in style to earlier Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) bird-and-flower paintings. Upon closer inspection, ants dismember a butterfly and reptiles wait to ambush their prey. An inscription at the end of the painting gives us an idea of its meaning: Attributed to the Qing dynasty scholar Zhang Xigeng (張錫庚, 1801–1861), the inscriber relates the work to an earlier painting by Qian Xuan (錢選, c. 1235–before 1307) and further suggests that the painting may allude to the relentlessness of natural selection. By drawing a parallel to tumultuous episodes in Chinese history, the writer might even hint at the domestic rebellions and the aggression of Western powers against China in his lifetime, particularly the Opium Wars (1839–60).

Object facts

• Title: Insects and Flowers
• Date: c. 1900
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911) or Republican period (1912-49)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Handscroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 30.5 x 799 cm (12 x 314 9/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1915.617

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tanenbaum, Mary. Fishing on the Terrace: A Collection of Writings, edited by Heather Parks. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018.

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.