Weeping Willow
Qi Baishi Chinese
Not on view
This painting, executed shortly after the Japanese occupied Beijing in 1937, makes a point about life under foreign occupation, as Qi makes clear in his inscription:
Do not criticize Dao [Yuanming's] family for being weak, for lacking courage. There are times that willow branches must learn to bend [with the wind].
(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. 163)
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