Bamboo-Covered Stream in Spring Rain
Xia Chang
Ming dynasty (1368–1644), dated 1441
Medium
Handscroll; ink on paper
Dimensions
41.3 × 1500 cm (16 1/4 × 600 in.)
Classification
handscroll
Department
Arts of Asia
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
68041
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This fifty-foot composition reveals a “slit-view” perspective of bamboo growing along a stream. In single brushstrokes of varied tonality, leaves and stalks are depicted close up, cut off at top and bottom. Xia Chang executed this painting with great breadth and boldness as a gift for a friend who had planted a bamboo grove around his retirement villa. As it bends without breaking, bamboo evoked human values of resiliency and endurance for intellectual painters of premodern China. Xia’s dedicat...