Joys of the Fisherman

Wang Fu

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A twelfth-century couplet inscribed on the wall of a tavern characterized the lives of the fisherman and the scholar-official: Right and wrong reach not where men fish; Glory and disgrace dog the official riding his horse. To painters living in the tumultuous days of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, the theme of the fisherman symbolized a perfect escape from their strife-torn world. Wang Fu, a fellow townsman of Ni Zan (1306–1374), returned to Wuxi in 1401, after twenty years of exile at the desolate northern outpost of Datong, Shanxi Province; like Ni Zan, he had been a wanderer in his native land. In this long scroll Wang echoes Wu Zhen's (1280–1354) treatment of the fisherman theme. Poised between descriptive realism and calligraphic abstraction, Wang's painting exemplifies how Ming- and Qing-dynasty scholar-artists expressed themselves through the brush idioms of the Song and Yuan masters.

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