Spending the Summer – Wen Zhengming – Forbidden City, Beijing

A tall hanging scroll shows two simple thatched studios under old trees and a rocky cliff, with a scholar at rest inside, crowned by several poems and collectors' seals. Wen Zhengming (1470-1559), one of the Four Masters of Wumen in Suzhou, painted it at sixty-five in the free and easy style of his late years; the scroll later belonged to the Qianlong emperor.