Ma Lin (painter) explained

Ma Lin (– after 1256^[1]) was a Chinese court painter during the Song dynasty active during the early to mid 13th century.^[2] He was the son of the famous Chinese painter Ma Yuan,^[3] from whom he learned the art of painting.^[4]

One of his best known paintings is Night Outing with Candles, which depicts a gentleman sitting in the doorway of a pavilion, facing four pairs of tall candles amongst flowering crab apple trees. It illustrates a poem by the famous (dissident poet and artist) Su Shi: "My fear is that in the depths of night, the flowers will fall asleep and depart, so I light the tall candles to illuminate their red beauty.".^[5] A full moon in the sky overhead confirms its nighttime setting.

References

• Barnhart, R. M. et al. (1997). Three thousand years of Chinese painting. New Haven, Yale University Press.

External links

• Sung and Yuan paintings, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Ma Lin (see list of paintings)

Notes and References

1. Wen C. Fong Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8Th-14th Century (1992), p. 299
2. Barnhart: Page 133.
3. Web site: Ma Lin - Quietly Listening to Wind in the Pines. 2012-08-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20140222190906/http://painting.npm.gov.tw/npm_public/System/View.jsp?type=1&ObjectID=347. 2014-02-22. dead.
4. Yuheng Bao, Ben Liao, Letitia Lane, Renaissance in China (2006), p. 61
5. Wang Yao-t'ing, Looking at Chinese Painting, Nigensha Publishing Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan (first English edition 1996), p, 88.