The Poet Lin Bu Wandering in the Moonlight (late 1400s): Art, History and Details

The Poet Lin Bu Wandering in the Moonlight (late 1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Du Jin (Chinese, 1446–c. 1519).

The work and its context

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

Lin Bu (967–1028), a Northern Song (960–1127) poet and hermit who lived at the West Lake in Hangzhou, was known for having plum trees for his female companions and cranes for his children. This hanging scroll depicts the poet walking in the moonlight and looking at the plum tree, a scene described in his most well-known poem on plum blossoms. Surviving works signed by Du Jin are rare and this painting is one of them. Here, the artist used lively brushwork to depict the plum tree and rocks, exemplified in varying dots and strokes, and sweeps in different shades of ink.

Object facts

• Title: The Poet Lin Bu Wandering in the Moonlight
• Date: late 1400s
• Creator attribution: Du Jin (Chinese, 1446–c. 1519)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 156.4 x 72.4 cm (61 9/16 x 28 1/2 in.); Overall with knobs: 286.4 x 99 cm (112 3/4 x 39 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1954.582

A detail from the museum

Lin Bu withdrew from prestigious government service and lived as a hermit by the West Lake in Hangzhou.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

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.
• 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.