New Year's Day in a Village at Stone Lake (1609): Art, History and Details

New Year's Day in a Village at Stone Lake (1609) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Li Shida (Chinese, c. 1549–c. 1621).

The work and its context

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

This rural scene presents typical activities of a New Year’s Day in which relatives and friends approach the house to convey their good wishes to the elders. Two boys in the courtyard light fire crackers, and servants in front of the main gate beat the gong to announce the guests. Inside the house, the hosts entertain their guests by offering hot wine and by writing New Year couplets to be hung on the gates welcoming the New Year. White cherry blossoms announce the spring. The water village at Stone Lake is characteristic of the Jiangnan region in southeast China. Born in Suzhou, the artist Li Shida may have even had his hometown in mind when he produced this painting.

Object facts

• Title: New Year's Day in a Village at Stone Lake
• Date: 1609
• Creator attribution: Li Shida (Chinese, c. 1549–c. 1621)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album leaf; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 33.3 x 53 cm (13 1/8 x 20 7/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1980.178

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.
• Griswold, William, Xiaofei Tian, Richard Von Glahn, Feng Zhao, S. J. Vainker, Masaaki Itakura, Jiang Wu, et al. China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. Edited by Clarissa von Spee. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.