清　吳歷　墨井草堂消夏圖　卷|Whiling Away the Summer at the Ink-Well Thatched Hut

Wu Li

1679 · Handscroll; ink on paper · Asian Art

In his inscription, Wu Li records that he painted this handscroll one clear morning after a rainfall, sitting alone in his studio thinking of an absent friend. There is a dreamlike quality about the painting: birds, trees, bamboo, mist, and even rocks dance joyously around the hermit-scholar, who sits quietly reading in his idyllic domain. Although he was an ardent admirer of Huang Gongwang (1269–1354), Wu transformed the Yuan painter's "hemp-fiber" texture strokes into a distinctly personal style: cool pale ink textures in intricate contrasting patterns, silhouetted and suspended in space, have been applied with both an athlete's vigor and a poet's gentle cadence. In 1681, two years after he painted this work, Wu Li was baptized as a Christian, a most uncommon thing to do for a man of his background. Ordained in Macao as a priest in 1688, he was sent in 1689 to do missionary work in Shanghai, where he died in 1718.

Artist

Wu Li

Date

1679

Medium

Handscroll; ink on paper

Culture

China

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Purchase, Douglas Dillon Gift, 1977