Pulling Oars under Clearing Autumn Skies (Distant Mountains)

Arts of Asia

Ming dynasty (1368–1644); c. 1545

Lu Zhi
Chinese, 1496-1576

Landscape painting offered artists the opportunity to create visual poems about the beauty and continuity of nature and man’s place in it. Lu Zhi, a 16th-century artist, belonged to a class of highly educated men who painted for their own pleasure. In Distant Mountains, he used multiple ground planes and suggestive voids to create a majestic vista of jagged peaks and a meandering, wide river. Through the crystalline precision of his brush strokes, the artist achieved an image of great clarity and refinement.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of Asia

Artist: Lu Zhi
Title: Pulling Oars under Clearing Autumn Skies (Distant Mountains)
Origin: China
Date: 1540–1550
Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Inscriptions: Inscribed by the artist: Beyond the sky the distant mountains seem to float like green jade. In the evening light, on my magnolia boat, I watch numberless hibiscus spread toward me in the rapid wind. I feast my eye on the cold river in autumn. Lu Zhi.
Dimensions: 105.8 × 31.1 cm (41 5/8 × 12 1/ 4 in.)
Credit Line: W. L. Mead Fund
Reference Number: 1953.159
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Sherman E. Lee, Chinese Landscape Painting (Cleveland Museum of Art, 1954), p. 87, cat. 61, p. 85 (ill), 2nd ed, rev. (Harper & Row, 1962), p. 80, p. 81 (ill.), as Landscape with Clear Distance.
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Louise Ripple Yuhas, The Landscape Art of Lu Chih (1496-1576), (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1979), p. 368.
Louise Yuhas, “The Landscape Painting of Lu Chih (Part I)”, National Palace Museum Bulletin 20, 5-6 (November/December 1985, January/February 1986), pp. 9-10.
Louise Yuhas, “Lu Chih and the Literati Tradition: Paintings in the Style of Ni Tsan”. Ars Orientalis, 13 (1982), pp. 34-5; p. 52, fig. 10.
Alice R. M. Hyland, The Literati Vision: Sixteenth Century Wu School Painting and Calligraphy (Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 1984), cat. 19, p. 34, fig. 17.
Elinor L. Pearlstein and James T. Ulak, Asian Art in the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago / Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1993), p. 74 (ill.), pp. 75-76, p. 149.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Landscape Painting, 1954, p. 87, cat. 61, p. 85 (ill), cat. by Sherman E. Lee.
Memphis, Tenn., Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, The Literati Vision: Sixteenth Century Wu School Painting and Calligraphy, Sept. 16-Oct. 28, 1984, cat. by Alice R. M. Hyland; traveled to Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, Dec. 2, 1984-Jan. 27, 1985, p. 93, cat. 19, p. 34, fig. 17.

Purchased from Walter Hochstadter, New York
Ex collection: Xiang Yuanbian (1535-90)

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