Washing the Feet (from the Dusty World) (1570): Art, History and Details

Washing the Feet (from the Dusty World) (1570) 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:

A scholar on a boat in the middle ground bathes his feet in the cooling stream. The vast river scene is depicted from a high viewing point. The motif of a scholar washing his feet illustrates the phrase, “When the waters of the Canglang are clear, I wash my capstrings. When the waters of the Canglang are muddy, I wash my feet [only]” (from Songs of Chu, written before 256 BC). The passage evokes the image of the virtuous scholar-official who avoids government service when the ruler is corrupt (the rivers are muddy) and resumes service (washing my capstrings) when the waters are clear. Whether the artist here alludes to unfavorable times of government is not clear.

Object facts

• Title: Washing the Feet (from the Dusty World)
• Date: 1570
• Creator attribution: Wen Boren (Chinese, 1502–1575)
• Culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll mounted on a panel; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 170.2 x 79.4 cm (67 x 31 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1997.103

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Suzuki, Kei 鈴木敬. Chūgoku kaiga sōgō zuroku [中國繪畫總合圖錄 = Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings], 第 1卷. アメリカ·カナダ篇 [= vol. 1 American and Canadian collections]. Tōkyō: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1982.

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.