The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup
- DATE:
- c. 1600
- MATERIAL AND TECHNIQUE:
- Ink, pigment on gold, pair of six-fold screens
- CLASSIFICATION:
- Screens and Scrolls
- DIMENSIONS:
- Overall: 65 3/4 x 133 x 3/4 in. (1 m 67.01 cm x 3 m 37.82 cm x 1.91 cm) Depth (folded): 13 in. (33.02 cm)
- DEPARTMENT:
- Arts of Asia
- LOCATION:
- Not On View
- CREDIT LINE:
- Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc.
- OBJECT NUMBER:
- 1989.78.A-B.McD
General Description
These screens depicting The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup take their theme from a classical poem by the Chinese Tang poet Tu Fu (712-70 A.D.). Since the poem is one of the great pieces of Chinese literature, the subject was popular in the painting of both China and Japan. The screens show figures drinking, dancing, and cavorting in a landscape setting. Because the composition, especially the manner of painting costumes and foliage, is free of formulaic devices, it is difficult to attribute these screens to a particular school of painting. However, the work seems to be based directly on a Chinese model.
Adapted from
Label text, 2015.
Related Multimedia
Fun Facts
A poem by Tu Fu:
"Already mid-spring on the riverside,
Sunrise opens beneath blossoms again.
Hoping to see the bird, I look up. And
Turning away, I answer...no one there.
I read, skipping over hard parts easily,
Pour wine from full jars...The old
Sage on O-mei is a new friend. He knows
It is here, in idleness, I become real."
-Tu Fu, from "Two Impromptus," c. A.D. 760-765, in The Selected Poems of Tu Fu, p. 62