明 佚名 (傳)馬麟 雪梅圖 團扇|Snow Plum
Medium
Album leaf; ink on silk
Dimensions
9 9/16 x 10 in. (24.3 x 25.4 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Culture & Period
China · Song dynasty (?) (960–1279)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
From the Collection of A. W. Bahr, Purchase, Fletcher Fund, 1947
Accession Number
47.18.28
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate album leaf, titled *Snow Plum*, captures the quiet beauty of plum blossoms emerging through a dusting of snow. Created in ink on silk and measuring just under ten inches across, the work likely originated as a round fan (*tuanshan*), a portable format popular in Chinese painting for its intimate scale. Though attributed to the Song-dynasty master Ma Lin, the painting is now credited to an unidentified artist, reflecting the challenges of attribution in early Chinese art. The Song dynasty (960–1279) marked a golden age for flower-and-bird painting, when artists explored the expre...