Visiting a Palace at Night

Visiting reclusive sages and literati paragons was a popular theme in Chinese painting during the early Ming dynasty. Many court painters (broadly known as the Zhe school) created such storytelling pictures for the nobility, and some acclaimed paintings created for the court still survive today. These paintings served as visual reminders admonishing the powerful to associate with righteous scholars and to consult with wise officials in administering the state.

Many elite patrons followed this trend and commissioned artists to imitate those works by court artists, as they appreciated pictures showing how ancient officials sought to be courteous to the wise and condescending to the virtuous. This painting is presented in a Zhe-school landscape style, where an official and his attendants stand outside a palace or a temple complex late at night, as if patiently waiting to meet an important figure inside.