Tang Emperor Minghuang Watching a Cockfight
Mount: 13 1/2 × 12 inches (34.29 × 30.48 cm)
The Art of Southern Sung China, Asia House Gallery, New York, February 15-April 15, 1962.
Treasures of Chinese Art, J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, January 18-February 21, 1965.
Oriental art exhibition, Washington University, St. Louis, January 23-March 4, 1966.
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. 36.
Flowers to Frost: Four Seasons in East Asian Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, July 18, 2015- July 17, 2016.
Li Song depicted palace women in this illustration of court life centered around the Minghuang emperor (reigned 685–762 C.E.) of the Tang dynasty. Many court women appear in the background to serve the horse-riding emperor, who leads a game of cockfighting. On the lower left, female musicians are ready to entertain. On the top left, women serve food and drink from a building. At the top right, a leading woman instructs a maid, while children and pets play nearby. Dressed in fine clothing, they represented the male artist’s observation of quiet, hardworking court women.
Joseph U. Seo;
Oriental Art Gallery;
Purchased from Oriental Art Gallery by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1959.
Laurence Sickman, “Four Album Leaves by Li Sung”, Nelson Gallery Bulletin (March, 1959): 5-10, fig. 1.
James Cahill, The Art of Southern Sung China, exhibition catalog no. 23, Asia House Gallery (New York: 1962), 56-57.
Treasures of Chinese art, exhibition catalog, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville Kentucky *( Jan. 19- Feb. 21, 1965), no. 24.
The Continent Magazine, vol. 38, no. 6 (March 31, 1969), cover illustration.
Ellen Johnston Laing, “Six Late Yuan Dynasty Figure Painting”, Oriental Art, vol. XX, no. 3 (Autumn, 1974): 305-316, fig. 7.
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), 54, no. 36.
Robert Joe Cutter, The Brush and the Spur: Chinese Culture and the Cockfight (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1989), 62, fig. 2.
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), 317.
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), 345, fig. 191.
