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Anatomy of a Masterpiece: How to Read Chinese Paintings
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明 林良 二鷹圖 軸
Lin Liang (ca. 1416–1480)
Two Hawks in a Thicket
Hanging scroll; ink and pale color on silk; 58 9/16 x 33 1/16 in. (149 x 84 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, 1993 (1993.385)
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One of the leading court painters of bird-and-flower scenes, the Cantonese artist Lin Liang specialized in bold and expressive monochrome depictions of birds in the wild. Never before had there been such hawks as those painted by Lin Liang. Standing like monuments to strength and courage on the highest frozen peaks swept by bitter winds, living in worlds that lesser creatures could not inhabit, Lin's great birds are embodiments of heroism. In contrast to his usual image of hawks silhouetted against the sky and surveying their surroundings from a high perch, however, these noble birds appear withdrawn and reclusive, inviolable and inaccessible, as if lost in a dense forest of old trees and thick bamboo where no one could possibly reach them.
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