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Children at Play in a Garden, 15th century Ink and color on silk, laid on to board and framed. 52 1/8 x 34 3/4in (132.5 x 88.2cm)
Footnotes
佚名 嬰戲圖 設色絹本 鏡框 十五世紀
Large compositions of children--and almost exclusively boys--at play in a garden setting (yingxitu 嬰戲圖) were produced under the aegis of the Ming dynasty imperial painting academy. Inspired by thematically similar, but smaller fan paintings and album leaves produced by the Song Dynasty imperial painting academy, this theme was revived in the early Ming, generally associated with the court painter Lv Wenying (1421- after 1505).
Here the four boys play with exquisitely crafted and rendered toy boats. The children are depicted wearing sumptuous textiles, fine shoes and gold wrist bangles, indicative of their noble--if not imperial--status. The garden furnishings, including a massive porcelain jardeniere and finely carved marble basin, further establishes the high privilege of their environs. The elaborately carved balustrade functions as an important element of the composition, but also alludes to the fact that the young boys are literally 'fenced in' and contained within their luxurious setting.
A very similar composition of young boys playing with boats in a garden is in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei and illustrated in Ku-kung Shu-hua T'u-lu 故宮書畫圖錄, Taipei, 1989, vol 3, p. 257.
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