Looking closely: Peach Blossoms and Peony
An invitation to spend a little longer with a single work.
Zhao Zhiqian, Peach Blossoms and Peony, c. 1860. The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
Start with what you see
Move slowly across this work. Notice the relationship between dense passages and quieter areas, and between a detail and the whole. A change of scale can change the way an image is read.
The work and its record
The Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies the artist as Zhao Zhiqian and dates the work c. 1860. Its recorded medium is Folding fan mounted as an album leaf; ink and color on gold-flecked paper. The linked collection record is our source for these details.
Our invitation is simple: compare your first impression with what you notice after a few minutes. The catalogue provides a point of reference; looking remains an open-ended encounter.
Sources & further reading
About this image+
- Image attribution
- Zhao Zhiqian, Peach Blossoms and Peony, c. 1860. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, in memory of La Ferne Hatfield Ellsworth, 1986. Public Domain / CC0.
- License
- CC0 ↗
- Source
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
