Road to Shu (1743): Art, History and Details

Road to Shu (1743) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yuan Yao (Chinese, active mid-1700s).

The work and its context

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

Few works by the Yuan workshops in Yangzhou present a continuous composition of such monumental scale as this hanging scroll. Road to Shu (in Sichuan province) depicts the trade of goods over long distances and through mountainous terrain. Busy travelers lead mules over footbridges, mountain paths wind along steep slopes, and soaring bridges connect peaks divided by deep gorges. The Yuan studios produced paintings to decorate the residences of wealthy Yangzhou salt merchants and princely palaces. The title Road to Shu refers to the historical drama of the flight of Tang emperor Xuanzong (reigned 712–56) to Sichuan in the aftermath of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–63). At the same time, the scenery alludes to Anhui, the mountainous native country of many of the salt merchants and their trade routes in northern parts of the empire.

Object facts

• Title: Road to Shu
• Date: 1743
• Creator attribution: Yuan Yao (Chinese, active mid-1700s)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Qianlong reign (1736–95)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Painting only: 187 x 256.5 cm (73 5/8 x 101 in.); Overall with knobs: 270 x 284 cm (106 5/16 x 111 13/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2019.167

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sotheby's New York. Fine classical Chinese paintings & calligraphy. 20 March 2014.
• von Spee, Clarissa. “Acquisitions 2019.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 8–11.
• Griswold, William M. “Recent Acquisitions (2013-20) at the Cleveland Museum of Art.” Burlington Magazine 163, no. 1414 (January 2021): 93–104.

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.