Object details
| Name | Two Horses (任仁发二马图卷) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00146203 |
| Category | Chinese Paintings (绘画) |
| Period | 元 |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
A handscroll from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). The Palace Museum holds it among the paintings of its collection, and the image here is reproduced with the museum’s credit.
Yuan literati painters, many of them scholars disengaged from Mongol rule, made landscape and ink a vehicle for personal feeling. The period is the high point of the amateur, calligraphic ideal in Chinese painting.
A handscroll is read left to right and unrolled a section at a time across a table. It is a private, sequential format closer to reading than to wall display, and the viewer meets the composition the way one reads a sentence.
Source: The Palace Museum, Beijing — 数字文物库 (Digital Collection). Artefact no. 新00146203.
Image: © The Palace Museum.