NOTES
The delicate pink flowers of peach trees in bloom may be seen throughout this painting, providing a counterpoint to the blue-and-green mountain landscape. In traditional Chinese culture, peaches represent immortality and by extension, one or more groves of peach trees can symbolize the mythical realm of immortality. The title of the painting derives from a classic literary work of Chinese prose, the Record of the Peach Blossom Spring (Tao hua yuan ji) by Tao Qian (365–427; also known as Tao Yuanming). This text describes the chance discovery of an ethereal utopia where people lead an ideal existence in harmony with nature, unaware of the outside world for centuries. The passage serves as a substantial preface to a poem of thirty-two five-character lines.
This painting was previously attributed to the Ming-dynasty artist Qiu Ying (1494–1552), who was famous for paintings of this literary subject. Scholars now believe this painting was made by a 17th-century copyist during the late Ming or early Qing period. The painting is followed by a colophon, an inscription which describes how the work was produced, by the mid-19th-century scholar-official Tian Renxi. The colophon includes the full text of Tao Qian’s original story written in small regular-script calligraphy (kaishu). It was written upon the request of Tian’s scholar-official friend Xue Huan (1815–1880), who was in charge of foreign affairs at Shanghai from 1857 to 1863.
