Xia Chang
China, 1388­1470
Bamboo-Covered Stream in Spring Rain
Ming dynasty, dated 1441
Handscroll; ink on paper
41.3 x 1500 cm
Kate S. Buckingham Fund, 1950.2

This Chinese brush painting is part of a scroll that is fifty feet long. “I love the quiet and beautiful scenery of the stream and rocks, and the green and mist color of bamboo is enough to clean away worldly worries,” the artist wrote in the painting’s inscription.

The graceful bamboo was a favorite subject of Chinese artists. Xia Chang, a court painter in the Ming period (1368­1644), here used a technique demanding great skill in which each leaf is painted with just one stroke of the brush.