Li Shan (b. 1662), Scholar Beneath an Old Tree, 1734. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of The Pinkowitz Family, 2025 (2023.564.15)
Scholar Beneath an Old Tree (1734), a monochrome ink painting by the Qing-dynasty painter Li Shan (born 1662), was gifted to The Met by the Pinkowitz Family in 2025 and is currently on view in Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: Selections from the Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Li Shan was born in Nantong, Jiangsu. Recognized early for his artistic talent, he later entered the retinue of Gao Qipei (1660–1734) and studied under him—a successful official celebrated for his eccentric approach to painting, especially his revival of the ancient technique of applying ink directly with the fingers rather than with a brush.
Detail of the figures.
The painting presents a classic literati theme of solitude and retreat, while suggesting that cultivated life rests on two complementary pursuits: attunement to nature and devotion to study. Beneath a towering pine tree, a scholar dressed in white robes sits on an animal skin with a qin zither resting across his lap. He plays beside a running stream, drawing inspiration from the natural world around him. Behind him stands a roped bundle of short rods resembling bamboo slips, once used to record qin scores before the advent of paper—a quiet reminder that mastery of the elegant instrument required not only technical discipline but also sustained engagement with antiquity and its textual legacy.
So absorbed is he in his playing that he does not notice the young servant approaching from the left, carrying a plate in one hand and a teakettle in the other, ready to offer a tea break. The upper portion of the composition is left largely open, creating a field of misty negative space that evokes the mountain retreat to which the scholar has withdrawn, removed from the noise and politics of society.
The painting enters The Met at a fitting moment. The exhibition presents a chronological survey of fifteen hundred years of artistic production, drawn from more than two thousand works assembled over more than a century of collecting. Its final gallery offers a more intimate narrative, focusing on the relationship between Wen C. Fong (1930–2018), who led the Museum’s Department of Asian Art from 1971 to 2000, and his teacher Li Jian (1881–1956), with whom he studied brush arts as a young prodigy in 1940s Shanghai.
Measuring nearly six feet high and three and a half feet wide, the Pinkowitz Family’s gift commands a wall of its own in Gallery 213, where it is presented alongside works that collectively evoke the refined aesthetic world of the literati and underscore the ongoing vitality of this collecting tradition at The Met.
The painting will remain on view in Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: Selections from the Collection from November 22, 2025, through May 31, 2026.
