A Scholar Washing his Feet in a Mountain Stream by Chen Guan

A Scholar Washing his Feet in a Mountain Stream 16th-17th century

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drawing, ink

drawing

ink painting

asian-art

landscape

ink

orientalism

Dimensions 72 5/16 x 16 1/2 in. (183.67 x 41.91 cm) (image)105 3/4 x 24 1/2 in. (268.61 x 62.23 cm) (without roller)

Chen Guan painted ‘A Scholar Washing his Feet in a Mountain Stream’ using ink on silk during the late Ming Dynasty. The monochromatic palette emphasizes the forms and textures within this vertical composition. The artist uses washes of ink to create a sense of depth and atmospheric perspective. Notice how the blank space in the upper part of the scroll is just as important as the ink-painted forms. The mist and clouds are evoked not through representation, but absence. The diagonal thrust of the composition leads the eye from the lower right up to the upper left, inviting the viewer to imagine themselves in the scene, moving through the landscape. The scale of the human figure is dwarfed by the natural environment, suggesting a humility before nature. Consider the use of calligraphy and seals at the top, elements that are intrinsic to the artwork’s structure, and reflect the artist’s engagement with a broader discourse around aesthetics and philosophy.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

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This scene depicts unfathomably tall mountains rising upward to the sky. At the bottom of the painting, a man sits on a rock by the river, washing his feet. Above him, within the mist near the middle of the painting on the right side, a small scholar gazes out from where he stands upon a cliff. The mountain peaks beyond him rise further upward. The painter's inscription in the upper right of this landscape is the final couplet of poem No. 5 from the important poem series Yong Shi, written by Zuo Si (c. 253–c. 307). It reads: …Wearing burlap clothes, I'll leave the royal gateways stepping proudly, and follow in the footsteps of hermit Xu You! I'll shake the dust from my robe on thousand-foot ridges, and wash my feet in streams that flow a thousand miles. The scholar Xu You famously washed his ears with pure mountain stream water after being offered an important government post. This couplet is one of the earliest statements of the formative dichotomy in Chinese culture between the Confucian pursuit of status and the Daoist desire to find spiritual purity and serenity in nature.