Fragrant Snow at Broken Bridge
Original title
Wang Mian 王冕
- Institution
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
- Accession
- 1973.121.9
- Credit
- Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Purchase, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, by exchange, 1973
- Rights
Public domain: the artist died in 1359. The Metropolitan Museum of Art releases this image under CC0 through its Open Access programme.
- Description
- On dark brown silk, a single long plum branch sweeps down from the top of the scroll in a great curve, its twigs covered in small blossoms painted in ink alone. Inscriptions run along the left side and across a colophon above.
- Image
- 850 × 1600
source file retrieved 2026-10-11 - Catalogue no.
- G-009054
coldlibrary.com/g/009054 - Credit line
- Wang Mian, Fragrant Snow at Broken Bridge, 14th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain (CC0). Via Cold Library: https://coldlibrary.com/g/009054
Wang Mian, a Yuan scholar who declined office and lived by his brush, is remembered above all for ink plum: blossom painted without colour, in ink alone. The English title, Fragrant Snow at Broken Bridge, comes from a later label strip and from his own poem on the scroll, in which a warm wind scatters the blossoms like snow. One branch is enough to fill the whole scroll.
