''Six Persimmons'' () is a 13th-century

Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as , meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western styles of art which b ...

by the monk Muqi Fachang. It was painted during the

Song dynasty The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Fiv ...

. Muqi was one of the two great exponents of the spontaneous mode of Chinese painting (the other being

Liang Kai Liang Kai (; ''c''. 1140 - ''c''. 1210) was a Chinese painter of the Southern Song Dynasty. He was also known as Madman Liang because of his very informal pictures. He was born in Shandong and worked in Lin An (later Hangzhou). He is known to have ...

). It features six

persimmons The persimmon () is the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus ''Diospyros''. The most widely cultivated of these is the Chinese and Japanese kaki persimmon, ''Diospyros kaki''. In 2022, China produced 77% of the world's pe ...

on an undefined background. It is painted in blue-black ink on paper.Lee Page 379-380 The painting is often cited as an expression of

Chan Buddhist Chan (; of ), from Sanskrit ''dhyāna in Buddhism, dhyāna'' (meaning "meditation" or "meditative state"), is a Chinese school of Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhism. It developed in China from the 6th century CE onwards, becoming especially popula ...

ideals. The thick and thin brushstrokes that model the lightest of the persimmons make it seem to float in contrast to the darker one next to it. The treatment of the stems and leaves have been compared to

Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...

s. Professor James Cahill of the University of California Berkeley devoted a lecture to the image. It is currently in the collection of the Juko'in subtemple of

Daitoku-ji is a Rinzai school Zen Buddhist temple in the Murasakino neighborhood of Kita-ku in the city of Kyoto Japan. Its ('' sangō'') is . The Daitoku-ji temple complex is one of the largest Zen temples in Kyoto, covering more than . In addition to ...

Kyoto, Japan Kyoto ( or ; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth-most pop ...

Gary Snyder Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate ...

referenced the image in his 2008 poem "Mu Ch'i's Persimmons".{{Cite magazine , last=Snyder , first=Gary , date=2008-10-13 , title=Mu Ch'I's Persimmons , language=en-US , magazine=The New Yorker , url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/20/mu-chis-persimmons , access-date=2023-11-20 , issn=0028-792X

Footnotes

References

*Lee, Sherman E. (1994), ''A History of Far Eastern Art (5th ed.)'', Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, NY *Waley, Arthur (1923), ''An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting'', Benn, London Song dynasty paintings Persimmon Paintings of fruit 13th-century paintings