The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
Location History:
Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, From the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Family Collection, Gift of Oscar L. Tang, 1991
Sparse trees and pavilion is an ink on silk fan painting mounted as an album leaf, created by Chinese artist Wang Meng in the late 1350s during the late Yuan dynasty. This artwork was created as a gift for Wang’s friend Chen Ruzhi, a poet who was escaping the rebellion near his hometown at the time. As a gift, this artwork is a rather intimate portrayal of Chen, with Wang depicting his impression of his friend as a displaced refugee living a secluded life near Wang’s home. The artwork includes an inscription of a poem, in which Wang describes a peaceful hermit’s life of living in the woods, immersed in nature and unbothered in the summer heat, and when the night falls, retreats to his dwelling to listen to the mountain rain. The contents of the painting directly echo the poem’s feeling of lonely serenity, depicting a solitary figure sitting in a primitive-looking pavilion, with sparse trees towering over him.
This artwork is the only extant fan painting by the literati Wang Meng, courtesy name Shuming. A grandson of Zhao Mengfu, one of China’s most famous painters, Wang is a prominent painter himself and is regarded as one of the Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty. While he wasn’t as famous during the time he lived in, he went on to become a large influence on the painters of later generations.
The above painting is a classic example of Chinese art during the thirteenth and the fourteenth century. The Yuan dynasty, though Mongol in origin and ethos of the state, did not retract and continued to shower patronage to local culture, religion and traditions of China. This is evident in this artwork given above, which bounds a layman viewer and a historian alike to dig deeper into the nuances of this significant period of Chinese history but was less discussed till very recently in mainstream historiography.
