Plum Blossoms and Peonies (1741): Art, History and Details

Plum Blossoms and Peonies (1741) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gao Fenghan (Chinese, 1683–1749).

The work and its context

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

One of the so-called Yangzhou Eccentrics (a group of painters who lived in Yangzhou and were known for their unorthodox art and lifestyle), Gao Fenghan depicts China’s two most loved flowers in full bloom—the “cold beauty,” or plum blossom, in the first section, and the “king of flowers,” or peony, in the second section. Painted in 1741, the year when Gao decided to leave the south and return home to Shandong province in eastern China, this work was likely a token of farewell. His casual brushwork may indicate his mental and physical struggle at the time. After having crippled his right hand in 1737, Gao used his left hand to paint and achieved a crudeness and eccentric style unattainable before.

Object facts

• Title: Plum Blossoms and Peonies
• Date: 1741
• Creator attribution: Gao Fenghan (Chinese, 1683–1749)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 26 x 96.2 cm (10 1/4 x 37 7/8 in.); Overall: 28.9 x 534.7 cm (11 3/8 x 210 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1980.13

A detail from the museum

In East Asian art, peonies traditionally symbolize prosperity and wealth.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.

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.