Pine Trees, Maples, and Rocks

The oddly shaped rock to the left of Jiang Zhaoshen’s inscription, and the inscription itself, reference the leading scholar artist Mi Fu (1051–1107). Mi loved strange rocks so much that he wrote a poem on the rugged surface of a boulder. Mi convened scholar artists for conversations around art and ideas. Jiang, a modern scholar artist and curator at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, internalized Mi’s lesson on the importance of intellectual relationships. He dedicated this painting to his friend Laurence Sickman, former curator and director of the Nelson-Atkins.