Lychees

Signature: Helu Dingfuzhi
Dated mid-spring of 1941

Artist's inscription; poem, four lines in seven-character meter:

This delicious and rare fruit grows in warm places.
A traveler shipped a basket to me.
After eating the fruit I felt happy and in a mood to paint.
The day I finished this picture was one of unending pleasure.
Inspired by a Song painting; mid-spring of 1941.
In my 66th year, at the Studio of Seventy-two People in Shanghai, I inscribed an old piece of my verse using Shang oracle script.

Artist's seals: 1. Helu (square, red characters)
2. Works after my 60th year (square, red characters)
3. Nature feeds everything in the world (square, red characters)

Inscription: Additional inscription by Shou Xi: The poem is a ci written to the tune of Lizhi xiang jin.

The sweet rain rushes into my dreams of the South.
Night revels.
The banquet inspired a grand mood for poetry,
With flavor from a remote place.
It is as though a galloping horse appears amid red dust.
Drunk in Changan;
Many songs fill the ear but they do not equal one smile.

Even palce pavilions and walls grow tipsy.
Sentimentally reminiscing about her past,
At eighteen she didn't know what would come.
Fresh beauty is gone in a flash.
Heavy fragrance is hidden within the curtain.
Possibly, face to face we will play the sheng.
[the last line yields no intelligible translation].

Once [Zhang] Dazhuang and I each wrote a ci about lychees to this tune. Twenty years have quickly passed. When I looked at this painting, I was reminded of my old poem. I write it here to fill up the empty space. The dream of the South, coming from remote places, stimulates an appetite.

Inscribed on the 20th day of the 4th month of 1941, in my 78th year;
Shou Xi

When Yixin received this fan, he asked me to write a few words.
Shou Xi, in the summer of the same year

Calligraphers' seals: 1. Qin styudy (rectangular, red characters)
2. Shi Gongfu (square, red characters)
3. Shou Xi (square, white characters)
4. Complaint of the withered Wutong tree (square, red characters)
5. Shi Gong (square, red characters)
6. Peacefully and at leisure (square, white characters)

Marking: Collectors' seals: Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Collection

Robert H. Ellsworth American, New York (until 1986; donated to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Painting: Selections from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection," February 2–September 25, 1988.

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. "Between Two Cultures: A Selection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection," January 30–August 19, 2001.

Anita Christy. "The Dealer as Collector- An Interview with Robert H. Ellsworth." Orientations, 19, no. 2, February 1988. p. 41.