Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Translation:
In the sky above the garden is the radiant moon. In my dream, the snow is fragrant.
In the year of yichou (1925 or 1985?), autumn, the ninth month, at the lake Xizi, [I painted this]

Born in Shanghai, Lu Yanshao showed an interest in calligraphy and seal carving. In 1927 he began formal training with Wang Tongyu, a former official of the imperial court distinguished Shanghai painter Feng Chaoran. In the 1930s, he fled Shanghai for the mountains during the Japanese occupation. In 1938 he had his first exhibition and made a living as a teacher in a number of art academies. Then, his career was interrupted, like so many of his contemporaries, by the Cultural Revolution and he didn’t resume painting until 1978.

Lu’s painting is very much like his calligraphy above‒abbreviated and quick. Perhaps the painting is also influenced by his study of seal carving because if you divide the painting into its horizontal and vertical axes, the parts stack like a well-carved seal.