Illustration of Su Shi’s “Second Rhapsody on Red Cliff”
Unidentified artist
Fornerly attributed to Zhao Yong Chinese
In the style of Sheng Mao Chinese
The subject and style of this fan painting exemplify late Yuan scholarly taste. The picture illustrates the celebrated "Second Ode on the Red Cliff" by the Northern Song scholar-artist Su Shi (1036–1101), in which a poet dreams that a crane he saw during an outing was a Daoist immortal in disguise. The rough brush idiom is based on the traditions of Dong Yuan (act. ca. 940–75) and Juran (act. ca. 960–95), but the patterned texture strokes, moss dots, and brisk rhythmic arcs of the water reeds recall the fourteenth-century master Sheng Mou.
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