Drunken recluse beneath an old tree

early 16th century

Not on view

By the end of the fifteenth century the court had ceased to be the principal patron of the arts, so professional painters turned to private sponsors and to the marketplace as outlets for their work, adopting a bravura style of execution that transformed painting into a kind of performance art. Using an idiom of bold monochrome brushwork and graded ink washes first employed by Chan (Zen) Buddhist monk-artists during the thirteenth century, these artists made compositions with dazzling virtuosity, often before astonished onlookers.

The Fukinese painter Chen Zihe was a significant regional master in this tradition who took the sobriquet "Uninhibited Immortal" to emphasize his rejection of convention. Chen's humorous and somewhat provocative image of a drunken immortal exhibits all the key conventions of his craft. The shallow picture space and tight composition are constructed of powerful diagonals that intensify the dramatic focus, while highly animated brushwork offers a lively counterpoint to the massive scale of the pictorial elements, many of which are truncated by the frame.

Artwork Details

明陳子和古木酒仙圖軸
Title: Drunken recluse beneath an old tree
Artist: Chen Zihe (Chinese, active early 16th century)
Period: Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Date: early 16th century
Culture: China
Medium: Hanging scroll; ink on silk
Dimensions: Image: 69 in. × 40 1/4 in. (175.3 × 102.2 cm)
Overall with mounting: 9 ft. 9 in. × 47 3/8 in. (297.2 × 120.3 cm)
Overall with knobs: 9 ft. 9 in. × 52 in. (297.2 × 132.1 cm)
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 2005
Object Number: 2005.494.4
Curatorial Department: Asian Art

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7362. Drunken Immortal beneath an Old Tree

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