Old Trees by a Wintry Brook

Old Trees by a Wintry Brook is a hanging scroll in ink with a touch of color on paper, painted by Wen Zhengming in 1551. The picture’s size is 114 by 47 cm. The work depicts two gnarled juniper trees growing by a small stream. Their branches are bare and bent, and some brown dots on the branches resemble mosses. A few dots are similar to leaves that have not been shed yet. The undergrowth of the trees is covered in light and dry brushstrokes, and the stream flows soundlessly. Wen used limited color in his painting, and in general, he creates a general impression of a cold season. In the upper left corner, he signed his name in an inscription in a small and precise script. He marked the date of completion of the painting as the fifteenth day of the fifth month of the year 1551, and he was eighty-two years old when he painted Old Trees by a Wintry Brook. This marking is quite confusing since it was already late spring, and the painting depicts the middle of winter. Some believe that a snowfall at the end of the fifth month inspired Wen to paint Old Trees by a Wintry Brook. Others believe that the author depicted withered and gnarled trees in order to show the path of aging to the end. However, the dots resembling leaves in the picture indicate that the trees are still alive and wait for the next spring. Wen Zhengming was a painter, poet, and calligrapher from Suzhou. He learned painting from Shen Zhou. After his death, Mou Yueqi collected his paintings and calligraphy, and later, a collection of them was transferred to a collector in Japan. It was donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1997 as the bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry.