Five oxen stand and do almost nothing, and that is the point. Han Huang painted them in the Tang dynasty on paper, the oldest paper scroll painting in China still in one piece.
Han Huang was a chancellor as well as a painter, and the oxen read like portraits of patience: each turns a different head, each carries a different weight. No background, no story, just the animals and the eye that knew them. The handscroll format lets you meet them one at a time.
Paper was rare for painting in the Tang; silk was the default. That this scroll survived twelve hundred years is luck and care together. It is the earliest certain evidence of what a Chinese painter could do with a brush on paper.
Object details
| Name | Ink handscroll (韩滉五牛图卷) |
|---|---|
| Artefact no. | 新00087179 |
| Technique | Ink |
| Period | Imperial dynasty |
| Collection | The Palace Museum, Beijing |
| Source | Palace Museum Digital Collection (数字文物库) |
Image © The Palace Museum. View the original in the Palace Museum collection.