River Village: Fisherman's Joy (c. 1302–3): Art, History and Details

River Village: Fisherman's Joy (c. 1302–3) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Zhao Mengfu (Chinese, 1254–1322).

The work and its context

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

The artist of this blue-green–style landscape, Zhao Mengfu, was a southerner, versed in all fields of literati pursuits, such as calligraphy and connoisseurship. A princeling of the defeated Southern Song dynasty, he was nevertheless successfully recruited by Khubilai Khan to the Mongol court in the new capital, Dadu (modern Beijing), in 1286. This painting combines a distinctively southern flat watery landscape combined with features of the northern landscape tradition, notably the spiky trees, branches, and rough-surfaced rocks.

Object facts

• Title: River Village: Fisherman's Joy
• Date: c. 1302–3
• Creator attribution: Zhao Mengfu (Chinese, 1254–1322)
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Fan painting mounted as album leaf; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 28.6 x 30 cm (11 1/4 x 11 13/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1978.66

A detail from the museum

Various human elements can be found in the painting: two fishermen, an individual with a donkey, and someone in the house.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Goepper, Roger. 1000 Jahre chinesische Malerei. München: Haus der Kunst, 1959.
• Cahill, James, and Virginia Field. Fantastics and Eccentrics in Chinese Painting. [New York]: Asia Society; distributed by Abrams, 1967.
• Vinograd, Richard. “‘River Village: The Pleasures of Fishing’ and Chao Meng-Fu's Li-Kuo Style Landscapes.” Artibus Asiae, vol. 40, no. 2/3, 1978, pp. 124–142.

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.