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'Bird on Rock with Blue Flowers', By Unknown, Chinese Antique Scroll

About the Item

This 59" x 20" Chinese Antique Scroll depicts a simple yet serene scene of a bird on a rock. The bird stands on the rock, which is much larger in size in comparison to the bird. The bird' s body is facing the viewer but is slightly turned towards the left, while it's head is turned towards the right side of the composition and is looking down at the water just below the rock. The water appears to be a rushing stream, running towards the right and disappearing into the bottom right corner, with a small portion of another rock peeking out from the stream of water. Behind the rock and the bird, emerging from the left edge of the work, is a small plant with vivid blue flowers. The plant has about three stems with very lightly painted leaves with not much pigment, and three fully bloomed flowers in which one sees each blue petal and the yellow center of the flowers, and there are six other smaller blooms that are not fully blossomed surrounding the larger flowers. Among the plant with the flowers, there are also long brush strokes that perhaps represent wheat or a large grass plant. Branching off of these long, pointed blades of grass are two long but slim stems with many more fanned out strokes at the end of the stem, perhaps portraying the spikes of wheat plants or something similar. There is a signature found within the composition positioned in the lower right hand corner and consists of three vertically listed Chinese characters and a red ink seal placed just below the list of characters. Red ink seals are distinct for Chinese scrolls, and can often be the name of the artist or the owner, and see as though there are already black characters above it, the red seal could very well be the signature of who owned the scroll. Bordering this scene is an ornate, yellow silk fabric. The design on the silk consists of flowers, seemingly roses or carnations, as they are more round, with curved vines and leaves connecting the buds and filling the negative space between the flowers. This hanging scroll's mounting style is specifically known as the "Sansebiao" style. The painting made on paper, is known as "huaxin" (畫心; "painted heart"), and within the silk border of the work, the upper part is called tiantou (天頭; "Heaven") while the lower part is called ditou (地頭; "Earth"). Above the tiantou, at the very top of the scroll is a thin wooden bar, called tiangan (天杆) and there is a plastic ivory cylindrical bar at the bottom of this scroll, called a digan (地杆), which is attached to give the scroll weight at the bottom as that it hangs properly onto a wall, but it also acts as a base to roll up a scroll for storage when the artwork is not on display. According to Anna Willmann, from the Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "It is believed that the handscroll was invented in India sometime before the fourth century B.C., where it was primarily used for religious texts, and came to China by the first century A.D.
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