Saying Farewell at Xunyang (Song of the Pipa) (1500s): Art, History and Details

Saying Farewell at Xunyang (Song of the Pipa) (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Wen Boren (Chinese, 1502–1575).

The work and its context

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

This handscroll depicts The Song of the Pipa, a poem by Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846) written after the poet’s encounter with a pipa player on the Yangzi River. Expelled from her home city when her beauty and fame had faded, she played for the poet at night. Her musical performance and tragic life story resonated with Bai Juyi, who had just been demoted and exiled from life at court himself. The hazy, vast view and pale color tonalities of this painting illustrate these feelings of endless sadness, having lost one’s sense of purpose in life.

Object facts

• Title: Saying Farewell at Xunyang (Song of the Pipa)
• Date: 1500s
• Creator attribution: Wen Boren (Chinese, 1502–1575)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 27 x 271.3 cm (10 5/8 x 106 13/16 in.); Painting only: 21 x 60 cm (8 1/4 x 23 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1954.581

A detail from the museum

Wen Boren depicted the chilly autumn water with a fishnet pattern.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Yamamoto, Teijirō 山本悌二郎. Chōkaidō shoga mokuroku 澄懐堂書晝目錄. Tokyo: Tanaka Keitarō, 1932.
• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1954.
• 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.