Riverside Retreat by Xia Sen

Riverside Retreat c. 1250

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painting, ink

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painting

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asian-art

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landscape

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ink

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yamato-e

Dimensions: 9 13/16 x 10 in. (24.92 x 25.4 cm) (image)

Copyright: Public Domain

Xia Sen made this ink on silk fan painting, Riverside Retreat, some time during the early part of China's Qing Dynasty. This work evokes the lifestyle of the scholar-official, a class that once dominated the Chinese imperial bureaucracy. We see a lone fisherman on the river, while on the shore, humble dwellings are nestled among trees. The scholar-official would often retire to the countryside, and this image invokes an ideal of simple living in harmony with nature, a Daoist aspiration, that was popular among this elite class. At the same time, it presents the idea of being removed from social responsibility, from the administration of society. To better understand this image, one might research the structure of the Chinese government during the Qing Dynasty, and consider the relationship between the scholar-official class and the imperial court. Images like this helped to establish a social and political ideal, but one that was not necessarily available to all.

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minneapolisinstituteofart's Profile Picture
minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

This fan painting is signed Xia Sen on the earthen bank just below and to the right of the roots of the large tree extending from the left margin of the picture. Born the son of the famous academy painter Xia Gui (c. early 1200s), Xia Sen continued his father’s innovative style. The intimate, focused view of nature, clearly rendered motifs, low-angle perspective, and evocation of a coherent space are all characteristics of the painting circle of Xia Gui. The compositional emphasis of one side of the picture over the other creates pictorial tension and interest. This so-called “one-corner” composition, in which the subjects of the painting are pushed to a corner or a side, attributed to Ma Yuan (late 12th–early 13th century) and Xia Gui, came to characterize Southern Song academy painting, and the device was practiced by a wide variety of contemporary artists.

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