Description
A famous portraitist, Yu Zhiding here depicts the likeness of Shi Shenyi 史申義 (1661–1712), an official and poet. Master Shi, a sickly man, was deeply interested in medicinal science. The opening section of the scroll features a boy washing a fungus in fresh spring water, a basket of medicinal herbs by his side. Other servants carry a fan, a bundle of scrolls, and a cup of tea or hot wine. Master Shi sits in a bamboo grove, surrounded by fields of herbs. Returning swallows, pink peach blossoms, and blooming magnolia indicate spring, whereas the fungus conveys wishes for long life. The spring theme may express the artist’s wish for his friend’s recovery.
Provenance
Shi Shenyi 史申義 [1661–1712], Jiangdu 江都, Jiangsu province, China, by descent to his family (1703–12); Shi family collection, Jiangdu, Jiangsu province, China, (1712–late 1700s or early 1800s); Zhang Yin 張崟 [1761–1829], Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, China (late 1700s–early 1800s); Zaobao 皁保 [d. 1882]; (A dealer in Liuli Chang 琉璃廠, Beijing, China, sold to Zhou Zhaoxiang) (early 1900s?); Zhou Zhaoxiang 周肇祥 [1888–1954] (early 1900s–?); Fujii Yurinkan Museum, Kyoto, Japan; (James J. Freeman, Kyoto, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (?–2000); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2000–)
Accession Number
2000.69
Medium
Handscroll; ink and color on silk
Dimensions
Painting only: 36.2 x 132.5 cm (14 1/4 x 52 3/16 in.); Overall in heigh: 38.7 cm (15 1/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
Tags
Painting Baroque (1600–1750) Ink Silk Painting Chinese
Background & Context
Background Story
Yu Zhiding (1647-1709) was a Chinese painter of the early Qing dynasty known for the precise, detailed portrait and figure manner that makes him one of the most accomplished figure painters of the early Qing period. Cleansing Medicinal Herbs in the Stream on a Spring Day from 1703 depicts figures gathering and cleansing medicinal herbs in the precise, detailed manner that distinguishes Yu Zhiding's best figure paintings from the more loose painting of his contemporaries. The 1703 date places this in Yu Zhiding's mature period, when he was producing the precise figure paintings that are his most accomplished works.
Cultural Impact
Cleansing Medicinal Herbs is important in the history of Chinese figure painting because it demonstrates the precise, detailed manner that Yu Zhiding brought to figure subjects as one of the most accomplished figure painters of the early Qing period. Yu Zhiding's precise figure manner—combining the detailed observation of the portrait tradition with the compositional skill of the figure painter—represents one of the most accomplished traditions of figure painting in the early Qing dynasty, and the 1703 painting shows this tradition at its most detailed.
Why It Matters
Cleansing Medicinal Herbs is Yu Zhiding's precise figure painting: figures gathering medicinal herbs rendered in the detailed, accomplished manner of one of the most important figure painters of the early Qing dynasty. The 1703 painting shows the precise observation of Chinese figure painting combined with the literary subject of gathering medicinal herbs.
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