Palace Women and Children Celebrating the New Year, Ming dynasty, 15th-16th century. Ink and color on silk. H x W (image): 160.3 x 106.2 cm. Gift of Charles Lang Freer, Freer Gallery of Art, F1916.403 © Smithsonian

The courtyard of this large two-storied building is occupied by a group of elegantly attired palace ladies surrounding two small boys, probably young princes, who cover their ears in anticipation as one of the women kneels to light a firecracker. A third boy looks on from a nearby room, while a small group of children and servants approach the entrance gate with a large brocade-covered ball. Other women sit at a table on the ground floor of the building as a serving girl affixes a portrait of Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller, on the wall. The figure of Zhong Kui is associated with both the Chinese new year and the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, when his image was commonly hung in houses to ward off evil influences. Judging from the blossoming plums and camellias, both winter plants, and the barren branches of the other trees, the occasion being celebrated in this painting is the new year.               

An old Ming dynasty (1368-1644) title slip, currently mounted on the back of the panel, attributes this painting to the Tang artist Yan Liben (600-674), who was both a court painter and palace architect. However, based on its subject and composition, this attribution is clearly anachronistic, and the painting is probably a mid-Ming copy of a work originally produced at the imperial academy during the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279).