Whiling Away the Summer at the Ink-Well Thatched Hut 1679

Curator: This is Wu Li's "Whiling Away the Summer at the Ink-Well Thatched Hut," a piece created in 1679. It’s currently housed here at The Met. Editor: Wow, there's something incredibly tranquil about this. It’s mostly grayscale, an ink drawing…I almost feel the stillness of the summer air looking at it. Like a memory, fading slightly. Curator: The hazy quality definitely contributes to that feeling. It's rendered in ink on paper and relies heavily on line work to build up the landscape's contours. It reflects a specific engagement with classical landscape painting, yet also subtly pushes against those established conventions. We can think about the social status implied here too, of the owner of the ink-well hut and their ability to while away the time. Editor: Conventions… tell me more. My eye keeps going to the tiny figures making their way up the hill, their path winding back and forth in an elegant curve. It gives me the sensation of time, of process. It feels like seeing an ancestor at peace, yet laboring, if that makes any sense. Curator: It does. Wu Li, as an artist, grappled with the intersection of traditional Chinese aesthetics and his own lived reality as a Christian convert in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. The path you observe could symbolize a physical journey but also a spiritual one. The choice to depict this subject in this medium opens up discussions on identity and belief within the cultural politics of the time. Editor: A spiritual journey—absolutely. And that adds layers. The trees almost feel like figures in a dream. What is so curious to me, in some of the other paintings around this area, a perfect, sublime mountaintop seems to be the motif. Yet in Wu Li’s piece, it’s a modest, approachable hillside. It's human. The work feels gentle, philosophical...a landscape anyone could inhabit. I am in awe. Curator: Precisely. His conscious departure allows us to challenge historical hegemonies within landscape art and provides critical insights into marginalized perspectives in seventeenth-century China. Editor: Thanks for illuminating Wu Li’s world for us! Curator: My pleasure. Looking closely helps reveal those perspectives, every time.