Chinese Scroll

This Chinese hanging scroll contains two remounted album leaves with watercolor paintings of locust tree branches by well-known Qing Dynasty artist Ju Lian (1828-1904). The top (left) painting is dated 1876, and the inscription reads “Painted in the manner of Xinluo shanren, I inscribe this for the esteemed sir Jingqiao for his comments. Ju Lian painted.” The seal is inscribed Guquan, meaning Ancient Spring, which is Ju Lian’s courtesy name. The lower (right) leaf was painted in 1873, and Ju Lian wrote his pseudonym Geshan laoren or “Old Man of the Divided Mountain.”

The two album leaves were collected and remounted in 1941 by Mabel Yuk-Sein Young, the wife of Jen Yu-wen, a Chinese historian and public official. She added the paragraph below the paintings indicating that the hanging scroll was a gift to someone working with the YWCA. This matches the Lam Museum’s records, as this scroll is one of more than 100 objects in the Museum’s collection acquired by Marion Dudley of Wilmington, NC, who served as a missionary with the YWCA in China between 1927 and 1947.

This Chinese scroll is one of a group of six scrolls that are the subject of the Museum’s 2025 Conservation Fund campaign, and we request your assistance to have them professionally conserved. The scrolls are frequently used to teach about Asian artistic traditions, visual storytelling, the history of missionaries, and relations between the United States and China. All six scrolls are very fragile, and it is increasingly difficult to use them in teaching without causing more damage. Conservation work must be done to stabilize and mount them, so they do not need to be rolled and unrolled, thus guaranteeing their long-term preservation. The help of supporters like you is essential to complete the conservation of these important artifacts. Learn more about the Conservation Fund and contribute today!

Research for this post was conducted by Xinyu (Lavender) Wang (’24).