Wu Zhen, Fishermen, After Jing Hao (Poem)
This landscape handscroll is over eighteen feet long. It is painted in monochrome ink. As one opens and reads the painting from right to left, sixteen fishermen boating on a river appear one by one. Only four of them attempt to fish at all. The rest are busy sleeping, drifting, or simply enjoying the scenery […]
Ni Zan, A Branch of Bamboo
In this painting, the artist Ni Zan (1306–1374) chooses a simple and clean arrangement: the diagonal composition. A stem of bamboo is silhouetted against a plain background and ascends from the lower left corner to the upper right corner in a slight arc. The branches are light and sketchy. The leaves, stretching outward and upward, […]