Flower Basket

Spring flowers are gorgeously arranged in a hanging basket and there are butterflies flying around the basket. The peonies, yulan magnolia, and hall crabapple with pretty little flowers are subject matters that were particularly favored in paintings of flowers and birds from early on in countries such as China and Japan, which was influenced by China.

Looking carefully, you will notice that the contours of the petals and leaves are not drawn. Instead, the shapes are represented in different shades of color. This is a traditional Chinese method. Depiction without contours was formerly employed in landscape painting and in the tenth century, the Xu Chongsi style formed a school of its own in flower and bird painting. Inscribed in the lower right is a poem by Zhao Meng-fu, a man of letters of China in the Yuan dynasty. Beside it, there is an inscription stating that this was painted according to a coloring method devised by the early Northern Song artist Xu Chongsi, who was the founder of flower and bird painting without contours, i.e. depiction without contours. It demonstrates the fruit of Chinzan’s studies of Chinese painting.