Night-Shining White

People in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) were fond of horses, so horses became a favorite subject for paintings during that period. The creator of this painting is Han Gan (app. 706-783), a Tang painter who is known for his exceptional skills of painting horses. Born to an impoverished family, Han had to work in a tavern to support his family when he was very young. But Han’s painting talents were noticed by the influential poet Wang Wei (app. 701-761), who funded him to finally become a master of horse paintings. It seems unfair for the “poet sage” Du Fu (712-770) of the Tang Dynasty to criticize that Han’s horse paintings only focus on the flesh instead of bones. In this painting, the horse named Moonlight White, which belonged to Emperor Xuanzong (685-762), was plump but sturdy and energetic. Bound by a rope to a wooden pile, the horse is whinnying with four paws up in the air, trying to shake off the bridle. A lifelike horse bounced off the paper with just a few strokes by the painter to outline the structure and then some polishing on the body. The inscription of “Han Gan’s Painting of Horse Moonlight White” was left by the poet emperor Li Yu (937-938) of the Southern Tang State of the Five Dynasties and Ten States Period (907-979). The signature of Mi Fu (1051-1107), a heavyweight painter of the Song Dynasty, and his seal of “appreciated by Mi Fu” on this painting are examples of the well-known traces by later generations who appreciated and collected this work. The inscriber of “Yan Yuan” is yet to be confirmed.