Transplanting Rice Seedlings

This painting renders a scene of ideal country life in a spring village. In the right foreground is a house with an open window through which can be seen a desk piled with books—clearly the country villa of a member of the educated elite. At the left, five farmers transplant rice seedlings. The central intention of the painting is to be found in the inscription, which reads:

Clear rainwater has risen to the banks. Everywhere fields cry for seedlings to be planted. Green gardens attract birds to sing and rest, their shadows like fresh lotuses appliquéd to the surface of the water. —Painted and inscribed by Mao Dan from Meixi in the summer of the wuzi year (1888).

Mao Dan was a landscape painter in the prosperous Jiangnan region and was known for making pictures of weaving and farming. The planting and harvesting of rice was critical to a traditional agrarian society’s well-being, and such scenes were often used as didactic pictures to instruct students of the significance of farming and other agricultural activities. They also carried wishes for the success and prosperity of a state, viewed as consequences of the reign of a benevolent and just emperor.