清 石濤 (朱若極) 風雨竹圖 軸|Bamboo in wind and rain

Shitao (Zhu Ruoji)

ca. 1694 · Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Asian Art

Shitao, one of the most outstanding landscape masters of his time, was also passionately in love with bamboo painting. On this monumental work, he quotes a description by Su Che (1039–1112) of Wen Tong (1018–1079), the Northern Song bamboo painter: "He dallies amid bamboo in the morning, stays in the company of bamboo in the evening, drinks and eats amid the bamboo, and rests and sleeps in the shade of bamboo; having observed all the different aspects of the bamboo, he then exhausts all the bamboo's many transformations." Accompanying Shitao's signature is his seal, which quotes a saying by Wen Tong: "How can I live one day without this gentleman!" During the eighteenth,century, Shitao's style of bamboo painting was practiced by members of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou.

Artist

Shitao (Zhu Ruoji)

Date

ca. 1694

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink on paper

Culture

China

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Edward Elliott Family Collection, Gift of Douglas Dillon, 1984