Flowers on a River: The Art of Chinese Flower and Bird Painting, 1368-1911

Leng Mei (dates unknown), Dog Sitting under Flowers (detail), hanging scroll; ink and color on silk 44 x 15 in. (111.5 x 38 cm) Tianjin Museum.

The highest forms of Chinese art have always been regarded as painting and calligraphy. The three major traditional Chinese painting genres consist of landscape, figures, and flower-and-bird painting. Flowers on a River, the first exhibition presented by the China Institute Gallery, introduces the masterworks from two renowned museums of China, Tianjin Museum and Changzhou Museum with a featured extraordinary handscroll by the most famous monk painter Zhu Da (1626-1705, known as Bada Shanren): Flowers on a River. This over 40 feet long handscroll, visually and artistically states the artist’s life journey and marked him a forever-remembered individualist artist.

The exhibition also attempts to systematically review the two major painting styles of academy and literati with several noticeable painting schools and explore the significance of this genre that thrived and endured for over a thousand years as it transformed the observation of nature into art and culture. It transmitted the traditional Chinese concept of “humanity in harmony with nature” as well as a universal outlook and the wisdom of life. It is arranged in three sections: “Precious Plums of the Palace: Academicism and Court Painters”; “Fragrant Plums in the Wild: The Literati and Their Painting Schools”; and “Vitality of Nature: Flower-and-Bird Painting and Social Customs.”