The present painting was inspired by a couplet from a poem by the Tang poet Wang (701-761), inscribed on the work here, that captures in a few words the magic of a pastoral life and environment. A vast river plain supports rice paddies, laid out like a patchwork quilt, a long boat docked on one bank, a farmhand on a water buffalo surveying the domain while another fellow with a hoe over his shoulder walks along a raised bank. A cottage is nestled within a small grove of trees, while white herons wing their way towards two cypress trees rising dramatically over a thatched pavilion in the foreground. There we spy on two gentlemen who appear to be admiring the floral arrangement set on a low table before them.
Such bucolic scenes appear to have been among the specialties of the painter Cai Ze, who was known, according to an early biography, for figure and flower as well as landscape painting and was highly esteemed at the beginning of the dynasty.1 A similar rural scene bathed in soft mists, which enhances the tranquil mood, with a larger gathering of folk, was the subject of another painting by the artist sold by Kaikodo some years ago, “Plum-blossom Rain over River Village.” (fig. 1).2 Again the narrative theme is spread out along rice paddies dotted with bridges, boats and pavilions and peopled with fishermen, farmers and country gentlemen. This brings to mind a painting by Li Shizhuo (1690-1770), of similar subject and mood, which Stephen Alee suggests was inspired by the same couplet as the present painting. 3
1. Zhang Geng: Guochao huazheng xulu, Huashi congshu edition, volume 3, p. 1335.
2. See Kaikodo Journal II (Autumn 1996), no. 20, p. 52 & 219. In the entry Howard illustrates paintings by the artist where figures are the primary subjects and presented in settings quite different from the pastoral ones of the two Kaikodo pastoral paintings. He notes that the titles of some of Cai Ze’s unpublished paintings, such as Picking Chrysanthemums at the Eastern Fence of 1702 and the undated Washing the Wutong Tree, manifest a late-seventeenth-century renewal of interest in historical narrative painting, the first being a subject associated with the life of the poet Tao Qian (365–427) and the second with that of the artist Ni Zan (1301–1374).
3. See https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/search/edanmdm:fsg_F1980.142b/
Fig 1. Cai Ze, “Plum-blossom Rain Over Village,” Kaikodo Journal II (Autumn, 1996), no. 20, p. 53.
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