About This Artwork
Bamboo-Covered Stream in Spring RainMing dynasty (1368-1644), 1441
Handscroll; ink on paper
41.3 x 1500.0 cm (16 1/4 x 600 in.)
Inscribed by the artist:
Zhou Jihong of Haiwu built a house at Xichou, where ten thousand long bamboo trees surround the stream. I love the quiet and beautiful scenery of stream and rocks, and the green and moist color of bamboo is enough to clean away worldly worries. One day Jihong had his second son, Tingyue, bring me a roll of blank paper and ask for a painting of bamboo. At that time, I was enjoying the coolness at the Pine Pavilion; therefore, I thought about the scenery and painted the Bamboo-Bordered Stream in Spring Rain. Although my painting cannot match the old masters’ essence of learning, it resembles the scenery of Xichou. I wonder if Jihong, who is a scholar of profound knowledge, has the same feeling when he looks at this painting. On the first day of the sixth month, in the xinyou year of the Zhentong reign [1441], Xia Chang Zhongshao of Dongwu.
Kate S. Buckingham Endowment Fund, 1950.2
Asian Art
Not on Display
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Publication History
Charles F. Kelley, "The Bamboo Stream Spring Rain Picture," Bulletin of Art Institute of Chicago, 45, 2 (April-May 1951), pp. 26-28.
Osvald Siren, Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles (Ronald Press, 1956-58), 4, p. 122, pl. 134.
Sherman E. Lee, Chinese Landscape Painting, 2nd ed, rev. (Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 57-58, pp. 58-59 (ill), as Bamboo Bordered Stream in the Spring Rain.
Kei Suzuki, comp., Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings [Chugoku kaiga sogo zuroku], American and Canadian Collections, (University of Tokyo Press, 1982), 1, pls. A3-019.
Kathlyn Liscomb, “Wang Fu’s Contribution to the Formation of a New Painting Style in the Ming Dynasty,” Artibus Asiae
47, 1/2 (1987), p. 69. fig.14.
Elinor L. Pearlstein and James T. Ulak, Asian Art in the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago/ Harry N. Abrams,1993), p. 75, 149, p. 2,3 ( frontispiece, ill. detail)
Ownership History
Purchased from C. T. Loo and Co., New York