Three Horses and Four Grooms (c. 1320s): Art, History and Details

Three Horses and Four Grooms (c. 1320s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ren Renfa (Chinese, 1254–1328).

The work and its context

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

Ren Renfa's horse images are elegant in appearance and vigorous in spirit. His work attracted not only Chinese scholars but also the Mongols at the imperial court. Inspired by the contemporary scholarly interest in restoring a sense of antiquity in art—an artistic direction led by Zhao Mengfu that exerted a great impact in the Yuan art scene—Ren Renfa, like Zhao Mengfu, modeled his depictions of horses after the Song master Li Gonglin. Another key style component that Ren introduced to this genre was a revival of the Tang classical tradition. The refined color treatment of the horses as seen here was derived from the Tang master Han Gan.

Object facts

• Title: Three Horses and Four Grooms
• Date: c. 1320s
• Creator attribution: Ren Renfa (Chinese, 1254–1328)
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Painting: 28.5 x 137.5 cm (11 1/4 x 54 1/8 in.); Overall: 29.2 x 556.4 cm (11 1/2 x 219 1/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1960.181

A detail from the museum

Only the elegant first horse with a white blaze is accompanied by two grooms, as if its lightning speed required extra supervision.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ferguson, John C 福開森. Li dai zhu lu hua mu 歷代著錄畵目. Nanjing: Chin-ling University, Zhong guo wen hua yan jiu suo 金陵大學中國文化硏究所, 1934.
• Lee, Sherman E. and Wai-Kam Ho. “Three Horses and Four Grooms.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 48, no. 4, 1961, pp. 66–71.
• Chinese Art: An Exhibition of Paintings, Jades, Bronzes and Ceramics: Being a Contribution Made by Smith College Museum of Art to the College Interim Session, 1962. Northampton, MA: The Smith College Museum of Art, 1962.

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.