18TH/EARLY 19TH CENTURY

The subject of a scholar riding a donkey followed by an attendant holding a prunus branch has been variously interpreted. The scholar may represent the Tang-dynasty scholar, poet and recluse Meng Haoran, who was reputed to have admired prunus blossoms. Another possibility is that the figure represents the fifth-century poet Lu Kai, from the Song State (420-479) of the Southern Dynasties period, who is shown traveling in Jiangnan accompanied by his attendant who carries a branch of prunus blossoms. Lu sends this branch hundreds of miles north to his friend the historian Fan Ye (398-445) in Chang'an with a poem, the last line of which reads, 'I send you merely a branch of spring'.