Album leaf

Qian Hui'an

c. 1875

Ink and color on paper

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Three figures, two adults and a baby, are gathered around a large pot over a fire. The scene is set outdoors with a rocky outcrop and sparse vegetation. More illustrational than the other leaves, this painting compensates for its less adventurous composition with a truly strange image. A man and a woman stand beside a stove or cauldron, from which they have just removed the lid; the lid sits on the ground while flames still shoot from the inside of the stove. Two naked male children, unperturbed by the flames, look out. The man observes them with solicitude, while the woman takes one of the children by the hands, as if to draw him gently out of the cauldron. Judging by the eight trigrams on the cauldron lid, the Daoist accoutrements on the nearby table, and the way the adults are dr