zhou dongqing ... the pleasure of fishes ... another long paper scroll ... dated 1291 ...

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/40393

reading from right to left ...

NB I've been wondering ... if the title should read "leisure", not "pleasure" ?

liu cai's astonishing painting, painted before 1130 ... fish swimming among falling flowers

one of the greatest masterpieces of chinese classical painting

https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/32476/

wu daozi's procession of 87 immortals ... animated ...

https://haiyan-huang.com/87-immortals

https://vimeo.com/65298666

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Eighty-seven_Celestials.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Daozi

chinese mythology, dragons and stuff by chen rong ... another scrapbook blog to be expanded slowly as & when

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mythology

the wikipedia article is encyclopaedic ... but i'll skim it and add images that appeal to me

first up ... the real thing ... CHEN RONG's Transformation of Nine Dragons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Dragons_(painting)

amazed ... wikipedia and boston have made this fabulous large image available

probably the largest pixel width i've ever downloaded ... 30020 X 1116 pixels

it fits comfortably on the screen and you can see EVERYTHING

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Rong_(painter)

chen rong's first inscription, translated by Jacqueline Chao, 2012

first dragon

second dragon

third dragon

fourth dragon

fifth dragon

fifth and sixth dragons

seventh dragon

eighth dragon

ninth dragon

then there's maybe CHEN RONG's six dragons ... some doubts about authorship

https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/chen-rong-as-catalogued-in-shiqu-6061275-details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=6061275&lid=1

https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-chen-rong-13th-century-as-catalogued-in-6061275/?intObjectID=6061275&lid=1

and maybe CHEN RONG's five dragons ... ( disputed authorship ... check with Jennifer Purtle  )

https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/3274/five-dragons-wulung-tu

shen-zhou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_Zhou

rain in classical chinese and japanese art ... i still don't get it ...

hardly any chinese painters tried to depict falling rain drops ... and in japan the subject seems to have been avoided until hokusai showed up


zhang yucai, painted in the early 1300s  ... beneficent rain ... plenty of cloud and lightning ... but the image is so dark it is hard to distinguish any marks that signify rain as a substance

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/40454



dai jin, painted in the early 1400s ... clear broad swathes of rain depicted here in "returning home by boat in wind and rain" ...

hokusai 1817 ... from the seventh book of manga

hiroshige, 1834 ... sudden shower at shono

kuniyoshi, 1835 ... nichiren's prayer for rain answered

my question is ... DID CHINESE ARTISTS POSSIBLY/MAYBE HAVE A SUPERSTITIOUS OR THEOLOGICAL REASON TO AVOID THE SUBJECT OF FALLING RAIN ?


later ... much googling and some serendipity led me to jennifer purtles paper on "zoomorphology" ... i think she tells me much of what i wanted to know ...

 

... https://www.academia.edu/34882399/_The_Pictorial_Form_of_a_Zoomorphic_Ecology_Dragons_and_their_Painters_in_Song_and_Southern_Song_China_Keywords_%E9%8D%B5%E8%A9%9E_Chen_Rong_%E9%99%B3%E5%AE%B9_Nine_Dragons_%E4%B9%9D%E9%BE%8D%E5%9C%96_Eco_art_history_%E7%94%9F%E6%85%8B%E8%97%9D%E8%A1%93%E5%8F%B2_

zhang yucai ... beneficent rain ...

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/40454

ai weiwei ... this one might stretch as it goes on

from ai weiwei ...


































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei


and shane mccauslands study of Zhao Mengfu ...

to my paper-and-glue-montage ... let the benificent rain fall on everyone