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Night-Shining White

Han Gan, ca. 750. China, Tang dynasty.

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Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

Ink painting of a pale horse rearing against a tether tied to a black post, surrounded by many red seals and columns of Chinese inscriptions.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

This is the portrait of a horse, a favorite of the Tang emperor Xuanzong, and Han Gan was the court painter famed for horses. The animal is tied to a post, and it will not stand still. Its eyes roll, its nostrils flare and its mane lifts as it rears against the tether. All of this is done in ink alone, with fine lines and soft shading that give the body its weight. Around the horse crowd the red seals and inscriptions of later owners and admirers, added over more than a thousand years. The painting has become a record of everyone who loved it. The horse is still trying to get free of them all.

Look closely

  1. Find the post and the rope. How much of the horse’s energy goes into pulling against them?
  2. Look at the eye. What is this horse feeling?
  3. Pick one red seal and wonder about the person who pressed it there.

While you sit

A thousand years of people have stood where you are and looked at this restless creature. Add your look to theirs.

Your seat in the galleries: a single slab of dark walnut, stamped at one end with a small square red seal.

About the work

Title
Night-Shining White
Artist
Han Gan
Date
ca. 750
From
China, Tang dynasty
Medium
Handscroll; ink on paper
Size
Image: 12 1/8 x 13 3/8 in. (30.8 x 34 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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