Man, Buffalo, and Calf (1145): Art, History and Details

Man, Buffalo, and Calf (1145) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Li You (Chinese, active c. 1145).

The work and its context

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

Here, a herdboy tending a cow with a calf is sitting beneath a tree with his pet myna bird. The painting can be read as a pastoral scene. As the water buffalo helped plow the fields, it was perceived as an animal that endures hard work without gain for itself, often interpreted as a metaphor for the official. Ox-herding pictures, presented as gifts in court circles, were used for their moral and political rhetoric. The Yijing (Book of Changes) states, The Receptive is the earth, the mother . . . it is a cow with a calf . . . the multitude [in relation to the ruler].

Object facts

• Title: Man, Buffalo, and Calf
• Date: 1145
• Creator attribution: Li You (Chinese, active c. 1145)
• Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: album leaf; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 25 x 26.7 cm (9 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.); with mat: 33.3 x 40.5 cm (13 1/8 x 15 15/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1960.41

A detail from the museum

Li You included such tiny details as circular patterns of hair on the buffalo’s hindquarters.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” October 4, 1960, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Cahill, James. The Art of Southern Sung China. New York: Asia House, 1962.
• Lee, Sherman E. and Wai-Kam Ho. "Scattered Pearls beyond the Ocean." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Feb., 1964), pp. 23–39.

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.