Li Kan was a northern Chinese who entered the service of the Mongol government at an early period and rose to a high position in the Yuan court. The author of an authoritative treatise on bamboo painting, Li stated that the painter must possess "the complete bamboo in [his] breast," and he urged statesmen to take up bamboo painting to discipline their minds and expand their breadth of vision.
Li completed these panels in 1318, the year the Mongol regime reinstituted the civil-service examinations, the chief means for scholars to gain access to official positions. The painting is done in the shuangou, or "double-outline," style of bamboo painting. This technique, in which finely drawn ink outlines are filled in with dense mineral pigments, was ideally suited to Li Kan's intense identification with bamboo. Minutely observed and intricately rendered, these noble plants take on a heightened sense of reality that approaches portraiture.
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Artwork Details
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元 李衎 竹石圖 對軸
Title:Bamboo and rocks
Artist:Li Kan (Chinese, 1245–1320)
Period:Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
Date:dated 1318
Culture:China
Medium:Pair of hanging scrolls; ink and color on silk
Dimensions:Image (each): 74 3/4 x 21 3/4 in. (189.9 x 55.2 cm) Overall with mounting (each): 106 3/16 x 22 3/8 in. (269.7 x 56.8 cm) Overall with knobs (each): 106 3/16 x 23 in. (269.7 x 58.4 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Gift of The Dillon Fund, 1973
Object Number:1973.120.7a, b
Inscription: Artist’s inscription and signature (1 column in semi-cursive script)
The Daoist Xizhai [Li Kan] painted this in the winter of the wuwu year during the Yanyou reign era [1318].
延祐戊午冬季息齋道人筆。
Artist's seals
Li Kan Zhongbin 李衎仲賓 Xizhai 息齋
Collectors' seals
Ming dynasty palace inventory half-seal (1373–1384) 囗囗囗囗司印
Wang Jiqian 王季遷 (C. C. Wang, 1907–2003)
宛平王氏家藏
Unidentified: 陳晉卿家秘玩書畫記
Illegible: 1
C. C. Wang Family New York (by 1949–1973: sold to MMA)
Cleveland Museum of Art. "Chinese Art Under the Mongols," October 1, 1968–November 4, 1968.
New York. Asia House Gallery. "Chinese Art Under the Mongols," January 9, 1969–February 2, 1969.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Song and Yuan Paintings: Exhibition of Newly Acquired Chinese Paintings," November 1, 1973–January 20, 1974.
London. British Museum. "Song and Yuan Paintings," November 7, 1975–January 4, 1976.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Peach Blossom Spring," November 21, 1983–June 3, 1984.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The New Chinese Galleries: An Inaugural Installation," 1997.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C.C.Wang Family Collection," September 2, 1999–January 9, 2000.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The World of Scholars' Rocks: Gardens, Studios, and Paintings," February 1–August 20, 2000.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Cultivated Landscapes: Reflections of Nature in Chinese Painting with Selections from the Collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill," September 10, 2002–February 9, 2003.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan I," March 1–September 21, 2003.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Chinese Painting, Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection," August 28, 2004–February 20, 2005.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Four Seasons," January 28–August 13, 2006.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bridging East and West: The Chinese Diaspora and Lin Yutang," September 15, 2007–February 10, 2008.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Yuan Revolution: Art and Dynastic Change," August 21, 2010–January 9, 2011.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Chinese Gardens: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats," August 18, 2012–January 6, 2013.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Metropolitan Collection (Rotation Two)," May 7–October 11, 2016.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection," June 13, 2017–February 4, 2018.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Noble Virtues: Nature as Symbol in Chinese Art," September 10, 2022–January 29, 2023.
Fong, Wen C., and Marilyn Fu. Sung and Yuan Paintings. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973, pp. 128–32, 134; 151–52, cat. no. 24.
Cahill, James. An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T'ang, Sung, and Yüan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
Suzuki Kei 鈴木敬, ed. Chûgoku kaiga sogo zuroku: Daiikan, Amerika-Kanada Hen 中國繪畫總合圖錄: 第一卷 アメリカ - カナダ 編 (Comprehensive illustrated catalog of Chinese paintings: vol. 1 American and Canadian collections) Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1982, p. 3, cat. no. A1-007.
Barnhart, Richard M. Along the Border of Heaven: Sung and Yüan Paintings from the C. C. Wang Family Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983, pp. 138–42, figs. 63–64.
Fong, Wen C. Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th–14th Century. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, p. 390, pl. 86.
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