The plum branches outdoor theme, long loved by Chinese painters, gets a fine airing in this painting scroll painting. There is a calm confidence in the strokes, the mark of a practiced hand. As a piece of traditional chinese wall art, it reads clearly from across the room and keeps giving on closer inspection.
The servants appears as a small pleasure of the composition, easily missed and worth finding. Collectors will linger on the feast, rendered here with unforced detail. In the middle distance, the plum branches anchors the painting's sense of place. With the scholars, the scene gains a lived-in quality that rewards slow looking. Painted with an easy, practiced brush, the drinking wine feels observed rather than invented. The outdoor motif is worked into the composition with classical restraint. In the middle distance, the banquet anchors the painting's sense of place. The lanterns adds a quiet accent, handled in the old manner of the brush. Against the silk ground, the table reads clearly at any distance.
As a piece of oriental wall hanging, it carries the calm authority of the classical tradition. The mood it sets is one of composure, hard to find and easy to keep. It has the calm of something that will never go out of style.
