Old Pine Tree (late 1530s): Art, History and Details

Old Pine Tree (late 1530s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Wen Zhengming (Chinese, 1470–1559).

The work and its context

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

Here the natural appearance of a gnarled and vine-entangled pine has been transformed into a rhythmic abstraction of brushstrokes and ink tonalities, with unifying opposites—opening and closing, rising and falling—that provide the design across the horizontal scroll. The artist's inscription reads: "The force of change beyond restraint; / The dragon's whiskers are likened to a forest of spears."

Object facts

• Title: Old Pine Tree
• Date: late 1530s
• Creator attribution: Wen Zhengming (Chinese, 1470–1559)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 28 x 139.3 cm (11 x 54 13/16 in.); Overall: 29.3 x 596.9 cm (11 9/16 x 235 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1964.43

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mi dian zhu lin/Shi qu bao ji 秘殿珠林石渠寶笈. 2 vols. Taipei: Guo li gu gong bo wu yuan [National Palace Museum], 1971. (Original text dated 1745.)
• Ferguson, John C 福開森. Li dai zhu lu hua mu 歷代著錄畵目. Nanjing: Chin-ling University, Zhong guo wen hua yan jiu suo 金陵大學中國文化硏究所, 1934.
• Sirén, Osvald. Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles. New York: Ronald Press, 1956.

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.