Peonies

Bada Shanren painted this undated work for a friend as a medium of social exchange and explained his motivation in an accompanying inscription that consists of a four line poem and short postscript. The theme of the painting and poem is the shaoyao peony, a popular garden plant. According to his postscript, Bada created this work on the annual celebration of the Birthday of Flowers--a festival that occurs on the twelfth day of the second lunar month--and was evidently responding to a poem written by his friend on the subject of the crab apple, which blooms at this time of year. Bada's poem reads:

I perused the classics, unnumbered glosses from the Han,
Lord Shao could not do any better than our feast today.
I dispatch this lovely flower within its pearl of jade:
Tell people just to wait until the later days of spring.

In the first two lines, Bada is simply saying: "I have looked diligently through the texts of antiquity and can find no record of a feast as sumptuous as the one we are enjoying today on the Birthday of Flowers." In the last two lines, Bada symbolically sends this painting of a budding shaoyao peony--which blossoms during the fourth lunar month--to remind his friend that in just a few weeks it will bloom even more splendidly than even the crab apple and other second-month flowers.

Poem translated by Stephen D. Allee