Brush Holder with Figures in Landscape and Poetic Inscription by Wang Meilin from Jiading

A CLOSER LOOK

The museum identifies this wood as carved bamboo and credits Wang Meilin (Chinese, active c. 1825).

The museum's collection notes: This bamboo brush holder shows a scholar inside a mountain retreat under trees. On its back side, a cliff inscribed with a text by the Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) describes the carefree life of a scholar among family and servants in the countryside. The text in cursive script style calligraphy ( xingshu ) says: A ten-acre [home], a five-acre yard with a water pool, and a thousand bamboos. Don’t say the field is narrow, or the location remote. It is enough to accommodate the knee and rest the shoulder. It has a hall and a yard, a bridge and a boat. It has books and wine, songs and string [instruments]. An old man in the midst of it, his white