Landscape Painted on the Double Ninth Festival

Landscape Painted on the Double Ninth Festival

Shitao (Zhu Ruoji)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Shitao painted this landscape for a young friend who visited him on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month—a festival traditionally celebrated by mountain climbing. Suddenly struck by his own old age, Shitao wrote this inscription: The days when I go climbing are few now and my walking staff no longer helps me. . . . When you were young, I was already in my prime; but suddenly, you are a man and I am old. The passage of time plays tricks on people; like mist or the moon, it cannot be trusted. The future is like a cloud or traces of decaying grass—how can one fathom it? (trans. Wen Feng) Shitao's painting is like a fleeting vision glimpsed through fog. As the fog lifts, an approaching skiff heralds the arrival of Shitao's friend, whose coming has the effect of clearing weather on the spirits of the housebound artist. Filling the sky above, Shitao's dedicatory poem is written in a buoyantly rhythmic version of "clerical" script. The monumental characters, engraved on stelae or cliff faces, boldly defy the transient imagery of the landscape and bespeak Shitao's determination to achieve permanence through his art.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Landscape Painted on the Double Ninth FestivalLandscape Painted on the Double Ninth FestivalLandscape Painted on the Double Ninth FestivalLandscape Painted on the Double Ninth FestivalLandscape Painted on the Double Ninth Festival

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.