1989.78.a-b.McD Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup

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.

Label text, 2015.

Japanese Painting and Calligraphy

1989: Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., purchased from Sycamore Ltd. (Leighton Longhi), New York [1]

Notes:
The main source for this provenance is "Invoice" dated July 26, 1989 in Collections Record object file.

[1] Works of art given or purchased by The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., a non-profit organization, are palced in the custody of the DMA for the purpose of public display on the presmises of the Museum or in other recognized art galleries or museums. The title to all works of art purchased (or otherwise acquired) by the McDermott Art Fund remains with the Fund.

Learn about the poem, "The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup."

44997557: UMO

Curator Anne Bromberg discusses this painted screen. 

WEB RESOURCES           

"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

apply to objects where number equals 1989.78.a-b.McD