Quatrain on fishermen

Emperor Gaozong

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Following his abdication in 1162, Gaozong lived another twenty-five years in retirement with his wife, the empress Wu (1115–1197), devoting himself to scholarly and artistic pursuits. This poem, written in running script, may be a late work. The poem embellishes a round silk fan, a favored new format in Southern Song imperial art. By the late twelfth century, all silk fans were embellished with a painting on one side and a poem on the other, the image and the words complementing each other. The retired emperor often inscribed fans to bestow as gifts. The poems, when not original works by the emperor, were taken from anthologies of Tang or early Song poetry. This poem, describes the life of the fisherman-recluse: Small fishing boats are moored along the sandbanks of a stream.Calling to one another, the boatmen have gone to the wine-house.Turning in their catch of perch to buy drink,They retire to the song of the oars, to sleep in the rosy mist. (Wen C. Fong, trans., in Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th-14th Century [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992], p. 227)

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art