Plum blossoms
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.This ambitious handscroll is the surviving masterpiece of Lu Fu, a specialist in plum-blossom painting who lived and worked in Suzhou during the early sixteenth century. Delicate flowers cascade across a surface more than twenty feet in length, offering an up-close view of a horizontal slice of a plum tree in full bloom. With great precision, the artist reserved unpainted paper for the blossoms against a background of icy blue. The scroll is also a remarkably complete artifact of friendship among elite Suzhou society. Commissioned by a man named Zhang Ling to commemorate an afternoon spent with the famed scholar Shen Zhou (1427–1509), the scroll is inscribed by several of the most celebrated men of sixteenth-century Suzhou, including Shen, Tang Yin (1470–1524), and Wen Zhengming (1470–1559).
Artwork Details
- 明 陸復 梅花圖 卷
- Title: Plum blossoms
- Artist: Lu Fu (Chinese, late 15th–early 16th century)
- Period: Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Date: dated 1505
- Culture: China
- Medium: Handscroll; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions: Image: 10 3/16 x 284 1/4 in. (25.9 x 722 cm)
Overall with mounting: 10 7/8 x 472 1/2 in. (27.6 x 1200.2 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Lent by a private collection
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art