Catfish
Qi Baishi Chinese
Not on view
Qi Baishi's great admiration for the paintings of Bada Shanren (1626–1705), in which a few deft brushstrokes might conjure forth a fish, bird, or plant that is at once beguilingly simple yet psychologically complex, convincingly solid yet set within a composition that is spatially ambiguous, is conveyed in his frankly imitative Catfish, with its self-mocking inscription:
I once saw Zhu Xuege's [Bada's] painting of a small fish less than three inches long and filled with natural vitality. Today, I took a piece of old wrapping paper and painted on it this [fish], which measures more than ten inches in length. But mine is not as skilled and sturdy as Xuege's. I feel ashamed!
(Wen Fong, trans., Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001], p. 161)
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