Anchorage on a Rainy Night illustrates how Ming scholar-artists intertwined poetry and painting to create a vehicle for intimate exchanges among a close-knit circle of friends. Radiating a mood of subdued introspection, the painting mirrors Shen's state of mind less than two months after his father's death, when he found solace in a friend's company. Shen drew on the pictorial vocabulary of the Yuan artist Huang Gongwang (1269–1354): softly contoured peaks, flat plateaus, and outcrops of round boulders accented by dark foliage dots and a few foreground trees. But Shen simplified Huang's complex brush idiom to a few brush conventions and a narrow range of ink tonalities, and he reduced Huang's richly articulated compositional structure to a geometric scheme of repeated diagonals in which the wedge-shaped foreground, receding stream, echelon of successively taller trees, and distant mountain slope all point toward the upper right, where he added a poetic inscription that places his visual tone-poem in context:
Sparse paulownia leaves bring drops of morning dew, East of the ancient city in the rising sun's slanting rays, Swallows fly low over the overflowing pond. Thus I know that tonight the spring rain will be plentiful, How fitting that fish should leap and ducks swim.
On the twentieth day of the last [lunar] month of spring in the dingyou year [May 2, 1477], I lodged on a boat to the east of the city with Weide. After the rain, everything grew quiet. I did this picture and poem to capture the mood.
In response to Shen's poem, his close friend Wu Kuan added a poem following the same rhyme scheme along with the observation that the harbor Shen has described is none other than the one fronting a farmhouse owned by Wu's family.
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painting
inscription #1
inscription #2
with mounting, rollers and knobs
Artwork Details
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明 沈周 夜雨泊舟圖 軸
Title:Anchorage on a rainy night
Artist:Shen Zhou (Chinese, 1427–1509)
Period:Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Date:dated 1477
Culture:China
Medium:Hanging scroll; ink on paper
Dimensions:Image (painting): 31 1/2 × 13 1/4 in. (80 × 33.7 cm) Overall with mounting: 84 × 19 3/4 in. (213.4 × 50.2 cm) Overall with knobs: 84 × 22 5/8 in. (213.4 × 57.5 cm) Image (colophon sheet): 12 × 13 1/4 in. (30.5 × 33.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill, 2015
Accession Number:2017.327.1
Inscription: Artist's inscription and signature (6 columns in semi-cursive script)
East of the ancient city in the setting sun's slanting rays, Swallows fly low over the overflowing pond. Thus I know that last night the spring rain was plentiful, How fitting that fish should leap and ducks alight.
On the twentieth day of the last month of spring in the dingyou year (1477), I lodged on a boat to the east of the city with [Zhou] Weide.[1] After the rain, everything grew quiet. I did this picture and poem to capture the mood.[2] [Signed] Shen Zhou
古城東畔日斜時，燕子低飛水漫池。 知是夜來春雨足，跳魚浴鴨總相宜。
丁酉春季念日與惟德同客城東舟寓，雨後人境俱寂，為圖與詩，頗得其趣。沈周
Artist's seal
Qinan 啓南
Colophon
Wu Kuan 吳寬 (1436–1504), 5 columns in semi-cursive script, undated; 1 seal (mounted above the painting):
When it rains on the green mountains beyond the city wall, Flowers fall, catkins fly, and swallows flutter across the pond. The poetic feeling of spring-who is able to capture it? Boatman Creek is the most fitting place.
My family has fields and a house to the east of the city. Beside the house is Boatman Creek. Shitian [Shen Zhou] once anchored a boat at this place-his so-called "boat lodging." I suspect that it is just this place that he has [painted].[3] [Signed] Wu Kuan [Seal]: Yuanbo
[1] The Weide mentioned in Shen's inscription is very likely Zhou Weide, a man for whom Shen executed an important album of twenty-two paintings that he began in 1477 and completed five years later in 1482; see James Cahill, Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the jEarly and Middle Ming Dynasty, 1368-1580, New York and Tokyo: John Weatherhill, Inc., 1978, pp. 88-89 and color plates 4 and 5. [2] Translation by Maxwell K. Hearn, from Hearn, Cultivated Landscapes: Chinese Paintings from the Collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002, p. 164, based on the previous work of Wan-go Weng (Christie's 1988, lot 30, p. 36). [3] Translation by Maxwell K. Hearn, ibid.
Marking:
Zhang Daqian Chinese, before 1954 until about 1966; [ Frank Caro Co. , New York, after 1966]; Chiang Er-shih , New York (until 1971; Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc. New York, Chinese Paintings from the Chiang Er-shih Collection, May 5, 1971, lot 17; Christie's, New York Fine Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy, June 2, 1988, lot 30 to Weill; Marie-Hélène and Guy A. Weill , New York, 1988–2015; bequeathed to MMA
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Text and Image: The Interaction of Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy," January 23–August 16, 1999.
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. "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. "Journeys: Mapping the Earth and Mind in Chinese Art," February 10–August 26, 2007.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Arts of the Ming Dynasty: China's Age of Brilliance," January 23–September 13, 2009.
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.
Guo Wei 郭威, ed. Dafeng Tang mingji 大風堂名蹟 (Masterpieces from the collection of the Dafeng Tang Studio) [Taipei?]: Yayun Tang, 1954, vol. 1, pl. 22.
Chō Dai-sen 張大千. Taifudo meiseki 大風堂名蹟 (Masterpieces from the collection of the Dafeng Tang Studio) Kyoto: Benrido, 1955–56, vol. 1, pl. 22.
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