Ducks and Peach Blossoms

Shi Lu Chinese

Not on view

Persecuted and imprisoned for his bourgeois individualism during the Cultural Revolution, Shi Lu escaped death only after being diagnosed as a schizophrenic. During this period he turned increasingly to the practice of calligraphy and calligraphic painting. In this work, dating to the early 1970s, the fragmented image of three swimming ducks matches the tremulous quality of Shi Lu's inscription:

How ducks make merry with peach blossoms in spring water.

(Wen Fong, trans., Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001], p. 244)

Ducks and Peach Blossoms, Shi Lu (Chinese, 1919–1982), Horizontal hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, China

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Ducks and Peach Blossoms, Shi Lu (Chinese, 1919–1982), Horizontal hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, China
Ducks and Peach Blossoms, Shi Lu (Chinese, 1919–1982), Horizontal hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, China

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