This poster or print that I found in a Goodwill in Cypress, CA has me perplexed. I thought it would be easy to research it and find out where it is from. I thought I could date it without months of digging through books at the library. I thought I would find similar images on the internet , no sweat. All that I have surely found is what an ignorant person I am and have been. I don't even know what country it is from. It might be China or it might be Korea or it might be chinoiserie from who knows where. I have studied several books on Chinese art and Japanese, Korean, etc. and have found that most Chinese and Japanese art have writing and seals on them, unless this is just a panel from a series or a scroll. It looks, from my admittedly truly-uneducated-in-Oriental-art-perspective to be from the Sung period. Or it is meant as a copy of something from the Sung period. BUT PLEASE, If you know better, PLEASE tell me what you think. I thought perhaps it could be a depiction of a scene from some Chinese opera, perhaps the one where a schoolgirl falls in love with someone in a dream. The people in the drawing don't look as if they live real lives. They don't look as if they need to walk around a lot. I believe the seated figure could be a man. Or the seated figure could be a woman. How truly disturbing that I don't know. I was thinking the seated figure could be a mother--due to the shape of her lower anatomy, I reasoned she might have given birth. Maybe this is a portrait of her and her eldest daughter. Or if that figure is a young rich man, could he be idle and too well fed and slightly out of shape? This is so embarrassing. I can't tell a man from a woman? I think both figures have grace and beauty. Obviously, they lead a genteel life, sitting around the garden. Why did the artist paint them? Was it simply because he or she was hired to do so by someone who wanted a portrait of family members ? Or was it a desire of the artist to show something he or she found .....what? beautiful? curious? somehow meaningful? All I could find from the label on the back of the frame is that the company made brass lamps and was involved in a lawsuit with some importers from Korea and another company from China. They don't seem to exist anymore, although I think they won that lawsuit. There doesn't seem to be a signature. There is a butterfly on the upper left border. I've included a photo of that (third photo down), as a clue for any interested viewer. I humbly thank you for reading this and if you have any comments.....
