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Old Pine Tree
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Here the natural appearance of a gnarled and vine-entangled pine has been transformed into a rhythmic abstraction of brushstrokes and ink tonalities, with unifying opposites—opening and closing, rising and falling—that provide the design across the horizontal scroll. The artist's inscription reads: "The force of change beyond restraint; / The dragon's whiskers are likened to a forest of spears."
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineOld Pine Tree (畫松圖), late 1530s. Wen Zhengming (Chinese, 1470–1559). Handscroll; ink on paper; painting: 28 x 139.3 cm (11 x 54 13/16 in.); overall: 29.3 x 596.9 cm (11 9/16 x 235 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1964.43