Thorns, Bamboo and Quiet Birds
Image: 25 1/4 × 20 inches (64.14 × 50.8 cm)
Chinese Paintings of Birds and Flowers, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, October 30-December 14, 1951.
Chinese Art Under the Mongols, Yale University Art Gallery, 1968-1969. Traveled to Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, October 1-November 24, 1968; Asia House Gallery, New York.
Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, Nelson-Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, November 7, 1980 – January 4, 1981; The Cleveland Museum of Art, February 7 – April 5, 1981; The Asia Society, December 3, 1981 – February 28, 1982; Tokyo National Museum, October 4 – November 17, 1982, no. 84.
Senses and Sensibilities in Chinese Painting, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, December 14, 2008- February 15, 2009.
The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, September 20, 2010- January 2, 2011.
A weathered tree rises nearby a rugged rock to mingle with stalks of fresh bamboo and tufts of new grass on the ridge below. For Chinese scholar-artists, like Zhang Yanfu, the imagery of dry tree, rock and bamboo symbolize their own resilience and integrity. Zhang then added a pair of still birds and tiny flowers to suggest spring was around the corner.
An inscription to the left of the trees—one of many added by the artist’s contemporaries—notes that Zhang Yanfu, a Daoist, painted this for friends who visit his temple. Above the landscape, six poems reference these natural elements.
Chang collection, by January 1947;
Acquired from the Chang collection by C. T. Loo, Inc., New York, stock card no. LP-7/12, January 1947-March 1949 [1];
Purchased from C. T. Loo, Inc. by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1949.
NOTES:
[1] C. T. Loo/Frank Caro archive, Musée Guimet, Paris, copy of stock card in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.
So-Gen Mei-Shin meiga taikan [Catalogue of famous paintings of the Sun, Yuan, Ming and Ch’ing dynasties]. Ed. Nikka kokon kaiga tenran-kai [Committee for the exhibition of Chinese and Japanese Paintings].Exhibition Catalogue (Tokyo: Tokyo National Museum, 1931), pl. 74.
Yi lin yue kan, no. 37, (January, 1933), pl.11.
Kinjiro Harada, Shina meiga hokan [The pageant of Chinese paintings] (Tokyo: 1936), pl. 391.
Zheng Zhenduo, Yunhuizhai cang Tang Song yi lai ming hua ji [Paintings of T’ang, Sung, and later periods in the collection of Zhang Congyu] (Shanghai: 1947), pl. 52.
Benjamin Rowland, Masterpieces of Chinese Bird and Flower Painting (exhibition catalogue, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University) (Cambridge: October 23- December 14, 1951), no. 18, pl. X.
Osvald Siren, Chinese Paintings: Leading Masters and Principles, 7 vols. (New York: 1956-1958), vol. VI, pl. 55.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 201.
Ross E. Taggart, George L. McKenna, and Marc F. Wilson, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. II, Art of the Orient. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 60.
Wai-Kam Ho, et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. (The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, c1980), 104-106, no.84.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993),322.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 352, fig. 214.
James C.Y. Watt, The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Yale University Press, 2010), 231. Fig. 250.
