Quails and Sparrows in an Autumn Scene (1347): Art, History and Details

Quails and Sparrows in an Autumn Scene (1347) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Wang Yuan (Chinese, c. 1299–after 1366).

The work and its context

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

The flower-and-bird subjects here are depicted in a meticulous manner, echoing the academic tradition but translating the customarily colored images to plain monochrome. Fine ink lines combined with carefully graded washes define the contours and give subtle modeling to the natural forms. Wang Yuan excelled in flower-and-bird subjects as well as landscape and figure paintings. A child prodigy, he was instructed by the great Yuan master Zhao Mengfu at an early age.

Object facts

• Title: Quails and Sparrows in an Autumn Scene
• Date: 1347
• Creator attribution: Wang Yuan (Chinese, c. 1299–after 1366)
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll, ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 114.3 x 56 cm (45 x 22 1/16 in.); Overall with knobs: 267.5 x 85 cm (105 5/16 x 33 7/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1997.91

A detail from the museum

Wang Yuan was from Qiantang, today’s Hangzhou in eastern China.

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jiao yu bu di er ci quan guo mei shu zhan lan hui zhuan ji [敎育部第二次全國美術展覽會專集 = A special collection of the second National Exhibition of Chinese Art under the auspices of the Ministry of Education]. [Nanjing?]: Shang wu yin shu guan, 1937.
• Wang, Chi-ch'ien 王季遷. An Exhibition of Authenticated Chinese Paintings, April 1948. New York: C.T. Loo, 1948.
• Rowland, Benjamin. Masterpieces of Chinese Bird and Flower Painting; A Loan Exhibition. October 30-December 14, 1951. Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, 1951.

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.