Red Cliff paintings
赤壁圖
Red Cliff paintings often show the night boating trip in Su Shi's Chibi fu, not the Three Kingdoms battle of Red Cliff.
01About
Red Cliff paintings are often paintings of Su Shi's Chibi fu. Su Shi was in exile at Huangzhou; in the seventh month of 1082 he went boating at the Red Cliff with a guest and wrote the Former Chibi fu, and when he returned in the tenth month he wrote the Latter Chibi fu. The cliff he visited is the Huangzhou Red Cliff, also called Chibiji, and not the site of the Three Kingdoms battle of Red Cliff; in the boat they talk about that battle, and then about heaven, earth and human life. The first fu has the moon rising over the eastern hills and a guest playing the flute, and the second has a lone crane flying across the river; all became subjects for painters. The National Palace Museum holds the Jin-dynasty Red Cliff by Wu Yuanzhi, which shows Su Shi and his guests boating, with a sheer cliff and a wide river; the museum describes it as the earliest example in its collection of the Red Cliff landscape type.
02In the gallery
Find how large the people in the boat are against the cliff, then read the lines of the fu quoted on the label and see which one the painter chose to paint.
Wall label terms in Chinese
- 〈赤壁賦〉
- Chibi fu (Ode on the Red Cliff)
- 黃州赤壁（赤鼻磯）
- Huangzhou Red Cliff (Chibiji)
03Notes
Red Cliff paintings mostly draw on the Chibi fu, and what to look at is how the painter shows moonlit night, river and cliff.
On the river, which draws your eye first: the small boat, or the cliff behind it?