Detail of the Handscroll "Joys of the Fisherman" by Wang Fu in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2009

Artist
Wang Fu (Chinese, 1362–1416)

Title/Object Name
Joys of the Fisherman

Culture
China

Period
Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

Date
ca. 1410

Medium
Handscroll; ink on paper

Dimensions
Image: 10 5/8 x 22 ft. 7 1/8 in. (27 x 688.7 cm) Overall with mounting: 10 15/16 in. x 38 ft. 3 11/16 in. (27.8 x 1167.6 cm)

Credit Line
Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Edward Elliott Family Collection, Purchase, The Dillon Fund Gift, 1982

Accession Number
1982.2.3


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/asian_...

and

A twelfth-century couplet inscribed on the wall of a tavern characterized the lives of the fisherman and the scholar-official:
Right and wrong reach not where men fish;
Glory and disgrace dog the official riding his horse.

To painters living in the tumultuous days of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, the theme of the fisherman symbolized a perfect escape from their strife-torn world.

Wang Fu, a fellow townsman of Ni Zan (1306-1374), returned to Wuxi in 1401, after twenty years of exile at the desolate northern outpost of Datong, Shanxi Province; like Ni Zan, he had been a wanderer in his native land. In this long scroll Wang echoes Wu Zhen’s (1280-1354) treatment of the fisherman theme. Poised between descriptive realism and calligraphic abstraction, Wang’s painting exemplifies the Ming- and Qing- dynasty scholar-artists’ practice of expressing themselves through the brush idioms of the Song and Yuan masters.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.