id: 141484 accession number: 1964.94 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1964.94 updated: 2023-09-19 11:02:25.259000 Beggars and Street Characters, 1516. Zhou Chen (Chinese, c. 1450-c. 1536). Handscroll; ink and light color on paper; overall: 31.9 x 244.5 cm (12 9/16 x 96 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 1964.94 title: Beggars and Street Characters title in original language: 流氓圖 series: series in original language: creation date: 1516 creation date earliest: 1516 creation date latest: 1516 current location: 003 Special Exhibition Hall creditline: John L. Severance Fund copyright: --- culture: China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644) technique: Handscroll; ink and light color on paper department: Chinese Art collection: ASIAN - Handscroll type: Painting find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Zhou Chen (Chinese, c. 1450-c. 1536) - artist --- measurements: Overall: 31.9 x 244.5 cm (12 9/16 x 96 1/4 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: 題: 周臣流氓圖. 古堇趙鶴琴 [印] 老鶴臨池; 鵝池軒 translation: remark: inscription: 正德丙子秋七月，閒窗無事 ，偶記素見市道丐者種種態度。乘筆硯之便，率爾圖寫。雖無足觀，亦可以助警勵世俗云。 東邨周臣記 [印]東邨; 舜卿; 鵝場散人 translation: remark: inscription: 吳中東邨周君，善丹青，尤長於人物。此圖其所見盛市丐者之狀種種，各盡其態，觀者絕倒。嗟乎，今之晝夜乞哀以求富貴者，安得起周君而貌之耶。臥雲徵君出示，余漫題其後。 甲子歲十月吳門黃姬水 [印] 士雅山人; 另一印不詳 translation: remark: inscription: 是冊凡數種。其飢寒流離疲癃殘疾之狀，種種之異。觀此而不惻然心傷者，非仁人也。計正德丙子逆瑾之流毒已數年。而[江]彬 [錢] 寧輩肆虐方熾。意分符剖竹諸君，亦鮮有能撫字其民者。然則舜卿此作，殆與鄭君 流民圖同意。其有補於治道者不淺，要不可以墨戲忽之也。 長洲張風翼題 translation: remark: inscription: 東村此筆，蓋圖寫飢寒乞丐之態，以警世俗耳。而質山 [黃姬水]欲其寫昏夜乞哀，而靈墟[張鳳翼]則擬之於安上門圖。二君之見，其各有所指哉。昔唐六如每見周筆，輒稱曰：周先生！蓋深服其神妙之不可及。若此冊者，信非他人可能而有符於六如之心伏矣。豈易得耶。若黃、張之指，則又論於畫之外，不在於形似筆墨之旨也。 萬歷丁丑十二月三日 茂苑文嘉 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Year in Review (1964) opening date: 1964-12-08T05:00:00 Year in Review (1964). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1964-January 31, 1965). title: Portraiture: The Image of the Individual opening date: 1983-11-22T05:00:00 Portraiture: The Image of the Individual. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 22, 1983-January 22, 1984). title: Images of the Mind opening date: 1987-07-07T04:00:00 Images of the Mind. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 7-August 30, 1987). title: Highlights of Asian Paintings from The Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 1998-02-21T00:00:00 Highlights of Asian Paintings from The Cleveland Museum of Art. Nara National Museum (organizer) (February 21-March 29, 1998); Suntory Museum of Art (April 28-June 21, 1998). title: Human Images opening date: 2001-10-23T00:00:00 Human Images. Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto, Japan (organizer) (October 23-November 25, 2001). title: Ji Yunfei: Last Days of Village Wen opening date: 2016-02-12T00:00:00 Ji Yunfei: Last Days of Village Wen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 12-July 31, 2016). title: Facing the Ancestors: Chinese Portraits and Figure Painting – Chinese Gallery Rotation 240a, 241c opening date: 2019-08-12T04:00:00 Facing the Ancestors: Chinese Portraits and Figure Painting – Chinese Gallery Rotation 240a, 241c. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 12, 2019-February 2, 2020). title: China's Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta (Jiangnan) opening date: 2023-09-10T04:00:00 China's Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta (Jiangnan). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 10, 2023-January 7, 2024). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (November 7, 1980-January 4, 1981); The Cleveland Museum of Art (February 10-March 29, 1981); Tokyo National Museum (October 4-November 17, 1982). * Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 122). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 23-October 27, 2003). --- PROVENANCE “Wo Yun 卧雲”, probably Feng Zilü 馮子履 [1539–1596] date: footnotes: citations: Chen Xin 陳新 [life dates unknown] date: footnotes: citations: Walter Hochstadter [1914–2007], New York, NY date: footnotes: citations: (N. V. Hammer, Inc., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) date: ?–1964 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1964– footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: Although Zhou Chen's original composition was an album of 24 figures, today it is mounted as two handscrolls, one in the Cleveland collection and one in the Honolulu Museum of Art. digital description: Zhou Chen from Suzhou provides rare depictions of impoverished people that once filled the city’s markets and streets. Despite Suzhou’s prosperity, its rapid growth polarized society, including the wealthy and those who had deserted their farmlands, who were without homes, unemployed, or sick. Amid these are figures who inspire fear rather than empathy. The painting may thus be informed by local practices at the end of the lunar year, in which street beggars, in exchange for food or money, would dress up like ghosts and demons to drive out evil forces. wall description: This painting demonstrates Zhou Chen’s masterful skill in rendering impoverished people from his memories of figures in the street. It also bears an empathetic inscription to stir awareness of the poverty and suffering of the wretched souls.

Famine, natural disasters, rapidly expanding urbanization, and population growth may have increased the visibility and number of beggars, social outcasts, and street entertainers during the artist’s lifetime, something he mentions in the painting’s inscription.

This painting may depict a typical scene at the end of the lunar year, when a city’s less fortunate dressed up like ghosts and demons and performed exorcism dances in the streets to drive out threatening malevolent forces for a fresh start to the new year. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Yang, Xin 楊新. “Zhou Chen de Qishi tu” 周臣的乞食圖 [Zhou Chen’s Beggars] , Meishu yanjiu 美術研究, 2, pp. 85–88. page number: url: Sirén, Osvald. Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles. New York: Ronald Press, 1956. page number: Mentioned: VII, Lists, 177 url: “Acquisitions of Works of Art by Museums and Galleries: Supplement.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 107, no. 744, 1965, pp. 159–167. page number: Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 162-163, figs. 77-79 url: www.jstor.org/stable/874578 “Annual Report for 1964.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 52, no. 6, 1965, pp. 141–166. page number: Mentioned: p. 153 url: www.jstor.org/stable/25152054 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. page number: Reproduced: p. 264 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n288 Lee, Sherman E. “Literati and Professionals: Four Ming Painters.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 53, no. 1, 1966, pp. 2–25. page number: Reproduced: pp. 9, 10, fig. 3. url: www.jstor.org/stable/25152081 Lawton, Thomas. "Scholar and servants." National Palace Museum Bulletin 國立故宮博物院, Vol. 1, no. 5 (Nov. 1966), p. 8-10 page number: Reproduced: pp. 8 and 10 url: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. page number: Reproduced: p. 264 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n288 Lee, Sherman E. "The Water and the Moon in Chinese and Modern Painting." Art international, vol. 14 (1970), no. 1, pp. 47-59. page number: Mentioned: p. 56, Reproduced: p. 27 url: Lee, Sherman E. “Varieties of Portraiture in Chinese and Japanese Art.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 64, no. 4, 1977, pp. 118–136. page number: Reproduced: pp. 133, 134, figs. 21, 22 url: www.jstor.org/stable/25159523 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. page number: Reproduced: p. 350 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n370 Cahill, James. Parting at the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, 1368-1580. New York: Weatherhill, 1978. page number: p. 191 url: Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980. page number: Reproduced: cat. no. 160, pp. 194-195 url: Siggstedt, Mette. Zhou Chen: The Life and Paintings of a Ming Professional Artist. [Stockholm]: [Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities], 1983. page number: url: Cleveland Museum of Art. Images of the Mind. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1987. page number: Reproduced: [p. 8 - 9] url: Clunas, Craig. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. London: Reaktion Books, 1997. page number: Reproduced: p. 87, no. 47 url: Time-Life Books. What Life Was Like in the Land of the Dragon: Imperial China, AD 960-1368. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1998. page number: Reproduced: p. 1 url: Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華 : 特别展 : クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから = Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998. page number: Reproduced: p. 59, cat. no. 35 url: Murphey, Rhoads. A History of Asia. New York: Longman, 1999. page number: Reproduced: p. 204 url: Thorp, Robert L., and Richard Ellis Vinograd. Chinese Art & Culture. New York: Abrams, 2001. page number: Reproduced: p. 311 url: Murck, Alfreda. "Images that Amonish." Orientations, vol. 32, number 6 (June 2001), pp. 52-57. page number: Reproduced: p. 53, fig. 2 url: Hyūman imēji: wareware wa ningen o dono yōni hyōgenshite kita no ka?: tokubetsu tenrankai [ヒューマン・イメージ : われわれは人間をどのように表現してきたのか？: 特別展覧会 = Human images]. Kyoto: Kyōto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, 2001. page number: Reproduced: p. 212, cat. no. 96 url: Mair, Victor H., Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, and Paul Rakita Goldin. Hawai'i reader in traditional Chinese culture. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005. page number: Reproduced: pl. 99 url: Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015. page number: Reproduced: pp. 264-269 url: Bianchi, Alice. Ghost-Like Beggars in Chinese Painting: The Case of Zhou Chen In: Fantômes dans l'Extrême-Orient d'hier et d'aujourd'hui - Tome 1 [online]. Paris: Presses de l’Inalco, 2017. page number: Mentioned and Reproduced: figs. 13, 15, and 17 url: http://books.openedition.org/pressesinalco/1484 Park, J. P. A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700-1850). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018. page number: Reproduced: p. 95, fig 2.19 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1964.94/1964.94_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1964.94/1964.94_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1964.94/1964.94_full.tif