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Rubbing

Image Coming Soon

Rubbing

ca. 1920s

Chinese

Wu Liang Shrine from stone carvings of the Eastern Han dynasty

The inscriptions on the Wu family shrines were studied by the 11th-century antiquarians who-despite never having personally set foot at the site-collected ink rubbings on paper. Qing dynasty (1644-1911) scholar and artist Huang Yi chanced upon the half-buried and scattered slabs while passing through Jiaxiang County, Shangdong in the 1780s, ordered their excavation and erected a preservation hall to both protect and display them. Chinese, Japanese and Western scholars of the 20th century reconstructed the original configuration of the slabs, informing the arrangement by which they are here displayed at the Seattle Art Museum.

The viewer is encouraged to imagine each set of rubbings in its original form as a three-walled shrine with gables and a roof.
Ink rubbing on paper
46 3/8 x 85in. (117.8 x 215.9cm)
Gift of James K. Penfield
91.255.1.18
location
Not currently on view

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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