Bada Shanren (Zhu Da)

Bada Shanren, born Zhu Da, was a Chinese painter, calligrapher and poet who lived from 1626 to 1705. He was born and died in Xinjian District, and his life spanned both the Ming and the Qing dynasties.

He was also a writer. Among the works most closely associated with him is Lotus and Ducks.

His paintings are held by museums in China and around the world. They include the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Museum, the Freer Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Princeton Art Museum, the Harvard Art Museums, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Museum of World Cultures and the National Museum in Warsaw.

Fish and rocks, the work shown here, is a hanging scroll painted in ink on paper. It is dated 1699, six years before his death, and was made in China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). As its title says, the subject is fish and rocks.

The painted image measures 53 1/4 by 24 inches (135.3 by 61 centimeters). Mounted, the scroll measures 92 1/2 by 31 1/2 inches (235 by 80 centimeters), and 92 1/2 by 34 1/4 inches (235 by 87 centimeters) including the knobs. John M. Crawford Jr. bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1988, and it is in the museum’s Asian Art department in New York.