River Village in a Rainstorm

Description

In this scene, windswept rain pelting a village captures the power of nature in a masterful composition.

Lü Wenying from Zhejiang served as a court painter during the Hongzhi era (1488–1505). Hardly known, with few remaining works, he is considered a Zhe school painter who followed the style of the Southern Song academy. Zhe school painters, named after the province of Zhejiang, transformed the poetic scenery of the Southern Song artists into dramatic, large-scale views. Active in the same region with frequent monsoon rains in the summer season, artists were familiar with outbreaks of rain and storms.

Provenance

(Kinzen Company, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) (?-1970); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1970-)

River Village in a Rainstorm

Lu Wenying

c. 1480–1507

Accession Number

1970.76

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink and slight color on silk

Dimensions

Painting: 170.5 x 103.4 cm (67 1/8 x 40 11/16 in.); Overall with knobs: 279.6 x 134.3 cm (110 1/16 x 52 7/8 in.)

Classification

Painting

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

John L. Severance Fund