Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence

1745

Album of Landscape Paintings Illustrating Old Poems: Man with a Staff Admires Chrysanthemums at a Fence, 1745. Hua Yan (Chinese, 1682–c. 1765). Album leaf; ink and light color on paper; image: 11.2 x 13.1 cm (4 7/16 x 5 3/16 in.); album, closed: 15 x 18.5 cm (5 7/8 x 7 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund 1982.68.3 Hua Yan’s painting of a gentleman admiring orange chrysanthemums evokes a quote from the poem Drinking Wine by poet and recluse Tao Qian (also called Tao Yuanming, AD 365–427): "I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, and serenely I gaze at the southern mountains."