Album Leaf

Landscape with calligraphy by Zhang Yuan Lan Tao. China. c. 1700. Ink and colours on paper. This album page was painted by Lan Tao, one of the so-called literati painters, amateur artists with a literary background. Literati painters often referred in their work to other painters or to poetry. In addition to the painting of an angler in the foreground the page includes a poem in calligraphic characters: Creation is an inexhaustible storage room. But our lives are limited. The painting is light of touch. Yet the bamboo and trees form dense brushwood. I do not fear the sound of my song, Yes, I will dance drunk until I fall. Who could show the Deer Park? Evening red over faraway mountains. Zhang Yuan of Houguan.