Five Auspicious Images

Literati artist Xu You was a native of Fujian province, located on China’s southern coastline. His career spanned the tumultuous period between the collapse of the Ming and the establishment of the Manchu Qing dynasties. In the painting, a gnarled, spotted pain tree twists and rises from an auspicious gathering of bamboo and wild orchids in the background, a fantastically shaped taihu rock, and in the foreground, taixian moss and lingzhi fungi, both associated with Daoist immortals. The colophon further underscores the Daoist theme of longevity:

The ancient pine stretches to heaven

Taixian moss covers the earth

For many years they have

Filled me with sustenance all the days and months.

As in most literati painting, Xu has drawn on a wide variety of brush techniques in this composition. They range from the thinly delineated leaves of the orchid to the thicker, wetly rendered bamboo; from the light grey tonal washes that shape the contours of lines and dots in the outline of the rock.